THE HIGHER 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 




BY ^jif;GTyi>^ 

BENJAMIN W. DWIGHT, 

AUTHOR or "modern philologt, its history, disoovbribs and results." 



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NEW YORK : 

A. S. BARNES & BURR, 51 & 53 JOHN STREET. 

1859. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

A. S. BAPvNES & BUKR, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States 

for the Southern District of New York. 



% ^ ♦ 



GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I. 

THE TRUE WORK OF THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

IL 

THE TRUE STYLE AND MEASURE OF THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN 
EDUCATION. 

in. 

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

IV. 

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

V. 

THE CONNECTION OF THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 
WITH THE PROGRESS AND PRIVILEGES OF THE PEOPLE. 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I 

PAGE 

The True Work of The Higher Christian Education... 1-61 

I. The Nobility of the Christian Teacher's "Vocation 8-22 

Viewed from an Earthward Stand-point 8-9 

Viewed from an Heavenward do 10 

The Profession in Present Dishonor 10-13 

God a Creator in order to be an Educator 13-15 

This the Profession of Professions 17 

A High Appreciation Necessary to Right Entrance 

on It 20 

Its Work in Many Things Above that of the Min- 



istry.. 



21 



The Mass of Qualifications Required in a True 

Teacher 22 

n. Some of its Great Normal Principles 22-61 

1st. Its Whole Spirit to be Thoroughly Christian 23-6 

No Motor-power on Earth like Love to Christ 23 

Poor Education the Source of Earth's P<irpetuated 

Misery 24 

The Love of Fame the Highest Stimulus Known to 

the Ancients 26 



VIU CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Ours, the Desire in All Things to Please God 26 

2d. The Principle to be followed : that the Body is 
Made for the Mind and for the Observance of its 

Laws 26-41 

Earnest Habits of Mind a Great Stimulus to Health 27 

The Two-fold Conditions of Mental Vigor 29 

False Theories about the Unhealthiness of Hard 

Study 30 

Their Evil Influence on the Education of the Young.. 32 

The Many Possible Causes of Ill-health to Students.. 33 
The Keflex Joyousness of Mental Devotion to Great 

Objects '. 35 

Criticism on the Eecent Advocacy of Other Views... 36 

Thought the Fountain of Perpetual Youth 36 

The Health and Longevity of German Students 37 

The Ruinous Efiects of Bad Air on American Stu- 
dents 38-41 

3d. True Education but a Development, 41-48 

Strong Loving Stimulation a Teacher's First Duty... 42 
Thorough Mental Discipline the Time Object of his 

Aims 43 

True Education one of the Greatest of Arts 44 

The Results Obtained from a True Education 45-7 

§ 1. The Full Use and Possession of One's AVhole 

Self 45 

§ 2. A State of Full Responsiveness to the Out- 
ward Universe 46 

§ 3. A State of Perpetual Growth in Range and 

Power of Action and in Joy 47 

4th. The Ultimate End to Each Individual, Character... 48-61 
Our Moral Nature the Summit of our Whole Be- 
ing 48 

Subjective Art the Highest of all Arts. . .• 49 

AU True Human Growth, Self-growth 50 

The End of the Universe, the Formation of Charac- 
ter 51 

The End of aU True Education, Christ 51 

5th. The Teacher's Highest Influence, a Personal One.. 61-8 
One's Insensible Influence, the Greatest Exerted by 

Him 52 



CONTENTS. IX 



The Influence of Man on Man, the Greatest of all 

Earthly Influences. 53 

Mere Mechanism, the Reliance of Most Educators... 64 

The Inevitableness of Routine Denied 65-7 

The Alleged Ingratitude of Yoiith Noticed 57 

6th. The Greatest Possible Productiveness to be Se- 
cured 58-61 

The Quality of Results Gained to be Obs^-ved 58 

The least Possible Waste only to be Allowed 59 

The greatest Possible Results to be Actually Achieved 60 

II 

The True Style and Measure of the Higher Christian 

Education 65-128 

Mrst, in Reference to the Body 66-81 

The Physical Systein, the Basis of all the Rest 66 

Physical Habits of the Ancients 67 

Variety of Specific Bodily Results Attainable 68 

I. The Bodily Ends to be Gained 68-76 

1st. Soundness, or Health 68-72 

Health as a Duty, Power, Joy, and Beauty 69-72 

2d. Positive Strength 72-4 

As Necessary for Strong Thought as for Strong Work 72 

Many Unmanned for Life by Poor Health 73 

Positive A'^igor, a Great Want of the Times 74 

3d. Grace of Mien and Manner 74-6 

II. The Means of Gaining the Ends Described 76-81 

1st. Conformity to the Appointed Laws of the Body... 77 

2d. Thorough Mental Industiy for Great Ends 78 

3d. Habitual Cheerfulness 80 

Secondly, in Reference to the Intellect 8 1-120 

I. Intelligence 81-112 

1st. Acquaintance with Man 82-94 

(1.) The Knowledge of Human Nature, its Value 

and the Mode of Gaining it 82 

(2.) The Knowledge of Human History : its Liberal- 
izing Influence : the True Way of Studying it and 

of Teaching it • 83-6 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

(3.) The Knowledge of Human Language, &c 87-92 

The Study of Language, the Best of all Discipline... 87 

Female Education Radically Deficient Here 88 

The True Christian Mode of Teaching the Classics... 89 

The Attractions of the Study of Literature 90 

The Charms of English Literature 91 

Value of High ^sthetical Culture 92 

Criticism and Rhetoric : their Value and Function... 92 

(4.) The Knowledge of Human Wants 92-3 

2d. Acquaintance with Science 94-105 

The Exact Sciences and their Utility 95 

The Natural Sciences : their Newness and Value 96 

The French, German and American Educational Sys- 
tems Compared 98 

The True Mode of Teaching the Natural Sciences.... 99 

Mental and Moral Science 101 

• Legal and Political Science 102 

The Present Low Style of Collegiate Education 103 

Hints Towards a Better Ideal 104 

3d. Acquaintance with Nature 105-8 

The Value of Beauty of Nature to a Scholar 105 

The Necessity of its Use in a True Education 106 

Where and How it Should be Pursued 107 

The Materials for it even in a City 108 

4th. Acquaintance with Art 109 

5th. Acquaintance with God: His Word and Character.... 109—12 
The Place of the Bible in our System of Education... 110 
The Practical Use to be made of God's Personal Re- 
lations to us Ill 

II. Aspiration 112-14 

No Object in Education More Neglected 113 

III. The Power and Habit of Disciplined Application to the 

Daily Work of Life 114 

IV. Full Power of Communication 115-19 

The Sceptred Men now, the Men of the Pen 116 

The Power of Earnest Words 117 

Christ's Use of Speech as His Great Instrument of 

Good 118 

V. Artistic Execution 119 

God a Perfect Artist, and Man should Strive to be... 119 



CONTENTS. XI 

PAGE 

The Art of Composition the Highest of all Objective 

Arts 119 

Thirdly, In Reference to the Heart 120-7 

The Narrowness of mere Educational Regnrd for the 

Intellect ". 120 

Society Greatly Interested in the Character of its Ed- 
ucated Men 121 

The Points to be Gained in their Character 122 

Any Education not Religious, Abominable 123 

All Irreligious Systems Doomed to Perish 125 

The Restraints of the Fearof Hyper-Denominational- 

ism 126 

What a Religious Teacher Can Do 127 

III 

The Tkde Christian Teacher 131-199 

No One's Services to Humanity Greater 132 

I. His Spirit 132-143 

1st. He Loves his Work 183-8 

His Love for it and for Life on Account of it, a Passion 134 

His Influence Compared with a Parent's 137 

2dly. He Loves his Pupils 138-141 

He Loves them Personally 138 

The Power of Truth Combmed with Love 139 

His Care to Avoid the Mistakes made in his Education 140 

3dly. He Loves his Master 141-3 

This, his Chosen Mode of Serving Christ 141 

True Teaching is and must be Religious 142 

XL His Labors 143-100 

Labor a Joy to him, not a Curse 144 

1st. His Labors at Home 145-151 

§ 1. He Studies the Wants of his Pupils 146 

8 2. He Strives to Enlarge his own Attainments 14G-151 

(1.) He Informs himself Fully of Passing Events... 147 

(2.) He is Ever Busy in Close Earnest Study 148 

(a.) In the Range of his Own Specialties 149 

(b.) In the Bounds of General Scholarship 150 

The Greatest Want among Teachers that of Earnest 

Men 151 



XU CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

2d, His Labors at School 152-191 

Here all his Strength is Expended 152 

The Special Preparatives of Childhood for Right Influ- 
ence 153 

The Ways in whicb they are Commonly Abused 154 

His Treatment of them how Different 155 

His Four Chief Forms of Labor 155-190 

1. Instruction 15&-170 

§ 1. He Strives to Get Every Pupil Thoroughly at "Work 156 

§2. He Purposely Places Obstacles Before Him 157 

§ 3. He Aims to Form in Him Habits of Perfect Method 158 

§ 4. He Carefully Sets Up High Ideals Before Him...... 159 

The Secrets of Successful Teaching 161 

The Philosophical Mode the True One 162 

Many Slavishly Confined to Text-books 162 

Many Forget all the Uses of Teaching 168 

Many Teach who Should Become Learners Them- 
selves 163 

The Special Fields for the Highest Kind of Teaching 162-170 

(1.) History one of the Most Valuable 164-7 

The Eich Variety of its Topics 164 

The Necessity of Large Foundations in it in one's 

Youth 165 

History Itself a Rich Deposit of Philosophy 166 

History and Prophecy Mutually Illustrative 166 

(2.) Science one of the Teacher's Highest Fields of 

Interest 167-9 

Science to be Taught so as Everywhere to Show 

God 167 

To be Taught also with Reference to its Uses 168 

The Habits of Mind Gained by its Study 168 

(3.) Language when Rightly Mastered and Taught.. 169 
Classical Study a Land of Mines and Gems and 

Spices 170 

2. Government 171-184 

This, One of the Highest of Arts 171 

§1. It Must be Exact 172 

The Voluntary System of Government Should Not be 

Found Wanting Here 173 

The Want of Exact Discipline in this Country 174 



CONTENTS. Xm 

PAQB 

§ 2. It Must be Genial 175-80 

Most Teachers Ungenial and Formal 175 

Youth to be Treated as Courteously as their Seniors. 176 

The Two Great Elements of All True Government.... 177 

Thorough Habits of Industry Must be Secured 178 

Tact to be Employed at All Times 179-83 

Anticipative and Preventive Influences 180 

Talent in Reading Character 181 

Skill in the Treatment of the Erring 182 

The Use of Corporeal Punishment 183 

3. That of Personal Influence 184-9 

The Great Undesigned Influence of Mere Character.. 184-6 

For Designed Influence, Great Scope Here 187 

^ The Power of Earnestness 188 

The Power of Direct Personal Love 189 

4. Immediate Religious Efibrt 189-91 

Religion to be the All-pervasive Spirit of his Work... 190 

Not Made Attractive as it Should be to the Young... 190-1 

In Conclusion : the Policy of Merit, the Only Policy.. 191 

Nothing to be Substituted for Honest, Earnest Work. 192 

What the Results of Ti-ue Teaching are 193 

Average modes of Dealing with Pupils 194 

Perpetual Efibrt to be Made for Each Individual 195 

Parents and Guardians not Exacting Enough 197 

The Prevailing Low Style of Education 198 

IV 

The Tkue Christian Scholar 203-67 

The Meaning of the Word Scholar 203 

The Name Ever One of Honor 204 

Mind, not Might, Now Rules the World 205 

I. The Characteristics of the Scholar 206-37 

1st. His Loves and Pleasures 207-18 

(1.) He Delights m Gaining Knowledge 207-12 

The Great Pleasure of Acquisition 207 

The Power and Pleasure Gained by Ever-increas- 
ing Knowledge 208-9 

General Scholarship and Special Compared 209-11 

(2.) He Delights in Finding Truth, as such 212-15 



XIV CONTENTS. 

PAOB 

Truth the Divine Aliment of the Soul 212 

The True Scholar Appreciative of Evangelical Truth 214 

(3.) He Delights in Using his own Powers 215-18 

Mere Animal Activity, and Much More Mental, De- 
lightful 216 

The Special Pleasares of Christian Scholarship 217 

Its High Practical Ends as a Source of Pleasure 218 

2d. His Liberties 218-24 

He Reads the Inner Sense of all Things 219 

His Range is the Universe 220 

He is Free from the Limitations of Others 221 

His Resources he makes Productive 222 

His Occasions of his own Appointment 223 

3dly. His Habits 

(1.) Of Thought and Feeling About his Work 224-3*3 

§1. His Patience 224-29 

He Accepts Gladly the Law of Labor 224 

Classical Study a Great Preparative for Patience 225 

The Heroism of Every-day Life the Highest 227 

The Demands for it Made by High Scholarship.. 228 

§2. His Enthusiasm 229-32 

A Quality Essential to the Student 229 

A Moral Virtue to be Cultivated 230 

Special Reasons for it in a Student's Life 231 

Life's Aspects to Him 232 

(2.) His Habits of Action Toward his Work 233-8 

§ 1. To be Thorough in his Style of Executing 

it 233 

§ 2. To Concentrate his Whole Mental Force 

Upon it 234 

Power of Fixing the Attention, our Chief Kind 

of Voluntary Power 23G 

The Height of his Ideal in Proportion to his 

Mental Greatness 236 

Certain Appropriate Maxims 237 

II. How Best to Promote his own Development 238-69 

1st. He Must Do All Things for God 238-44 

God a Person with Personal Relations to Men 238 

True Thoughts of Him the Greatest Possible Stimu- 
lus to the Mind 239 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 

The Religious Deyelopment the Highest Attainable.. 240 

Classical and Frigid, Words Falsely Associated 241 

The True Characteristics of a Christian Scholar 243 

2dly. He Must Keep in Full Sympathy with the Age... 244-6 

The Scholar Should he Practical 244 

One who Hoards Knowledge, the Worst of Misers 245 

His Age, a Scholars True Field of Action 246 

The Compensative Tendencies of Scholars 246 

3dly. He Must Keep Himself Full of Work 246-56 

Work, the Law of Success 247 

Little Mental Occupation, a Cause of Ill-health 248 

No One Knows his Powers Without Trying Them.... 249 
The Tendency of American Scholarship to Haste and 

Narrowness 250 

High Habits of Self-treatment to be Cherished 250 

Two Chief Modes of Intellectual Self-culture 251-4 

§ 1. The Philosophic and Artistic Study of Lan- 
guage 251-2 

§ 2." The Practice of the Art of Original Compo- 
sition 253-4 

The Gladsomeness of Right Mental Toil 255 

4thly. He must Maintain a True Treatment of his Body. 256-63 

The High Relation of the Body to the Mind 256 

Its Complicated and Wonderful Organism 257 

The Conditions of Health Few but Imperative 258 

Necessity of Moderate Eating 259 

Injurious Effects of Tobacco, even Hereditarily 261 

Sthly. He Must be Full of Good Cheer and Use the 

Helps Appointed for it 263-7 

Nature Contrived for Man's Perpetual Refreshment... 264 

The Ever-quickening Pleasures of a Thinker 265 

The Folly of Restraining Nature by Theory 266 

Hints in Conclusion to Young Students 267-9 



The Connection of The Higher Christian Education 

WITH the Progress and Privileges of the People .... 273-342 

The Good of the People, the Watchword of Chris- 
tianity 273-4 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Diffusiveness of All Good Things, its Very Genius... 275 

The Universal Wants of Humanity are Light and Love 276 

The General Mental and Moral Inertia of the Race.. 278 
The Only Remedy is the Higher Christian Education 

Made General 279 

I. The True Theory of General Education 279 

Each Man Deserves as Such the Highest Develop- 
ment 280 

The Common Style of Education Materialistic 281 

Toil Without Thought to Inspire it is Mere Brute La- 
bor 282 

The Elevation of the Mass, hut a Mass of Individual 

Elevations 284 

Each One Owes to All the Rest His Own Greatest 

Cultivation 285 

Society also Owes High Duties to Each Individual... 286 
The State Should Foster the Higher Institutions of 

Learning even More than the Lower 287 

Their Advantages Should be Open to AU 288 

Our Present College-system Adapted and American.. 289 
Their True Place, that of the German Gymnasia.... 290 
The True Fourfold Scale of Our Educational Institu- 
tions 291 

What Our University-course Should Be 291-3 

The Present Low State of our Academies 294 • 

Some Pleasing Signs of Improvement 296 

Our Common Schools Poorly Officered 297 

The True Aim of the Instmction Furnished in Them 298 

Too Much Parade in Our Educational Work 299 

All Such Contrivances Fail of their End 300 

Only Realities Wanted by Society 301 

The Alleged Unnecessariness of High Learning 302 

The Influence of Honorary Degrees Injurious on the 

Work of Education. 303-18 

The Modes and Processes of their Procurement 308-10 

Imitations of these Honors in Low Life 310 

American Pretentiousness, as Seen Abroad 311 

The Littleness of Hankering After Degrees 312 

The Church the Sustainer of the System 314 

How Different Such a Spirit from that of Christ 315-16 



XVll CONTENTS. 

PA&B 

In What Way it can be Broken Up 317-20 

II. The Connection of tlie Higher Education with all the • 

Lower Forms of Education 320-5 

The True Philosophy of all Upward Growths 321 

Men Imitate Spontaneously Those Above Them 322 

Where Colleges are Poor, Academies will be Also.... 323 

Men Love to See Eight Institutions Grow Stronger.. 324 
Schools and Colleges, the Forts and Castles of the 

Land 325 

III, The Necessity of the Higher Education being Thor- 
oughly Christian 325-34 

The Difference Between Subjective and Objective 

Christianity 326 

Societyhas the Greatest Possible Interest in the Wid- 
est Diffusion of True Christianity ' 327 

§ 1. Especially Among its Practical Leaders 328-30 

§ 2. And also among the Educators of those Lead- 
ers 330-1 

The Mistake made by IMany of the Relation Be^ 

tween Christianity and Education 332 

"WTiy Barbarism will Never Bear Away Modern 

Civilization 333 

IV. Some of the Great Results Already Achieved by Chris- 
tian Scholarship 334-41 

The True Sources of Power Often Invisible 334 

The Progress of the Age, the Progress of Thought... 335 

Material Producers have very Materialistic Ideas 336 

True Scholarship Progressiva as well as Conserva- 
tive 338 

Scepticism and Superstition, both Destroyed by Edu- 
cation 339 

The Rulers of the Age its Thinking Working Minds. 340-2 



INTRODUCTION. 



The Author feels that he has essayed indeed 
a great theme. But having in his life, as a Teacher 
for nearly twenty years, sought to realize in practice 
the ideas here expressed in words, the joy of the 
greater labor has emboldened him to undertake the 
less. However much the statement of the subject 
may justify itself, on its very announcement ; and 
however familiar the combination of ideas contained 
in it ought to be ; it is still, strange to say, not 
only new to the public ear, but the class of truths 
denoted by it remains yet practically undeveloped, 
as a whole, in the world, in any of their larger pro- 
portions and relations. No interests, however, need 
more earnest and immediate treatment, than those 
pertaining to the Higher Christian Education of the 



11 INTEODUCTION. 

youth of this age and country. If the author shall 
succeed in awakening new and adequate attention, 
in any direction, to the momentous work of rightly 
developing the mind and character of the rising 
generation, deep will be the satisfaction that his 
labor has not only been lovingly, but also efl&ciently, 
expended. The school, rightly conducted, is one of 
the greatest of all moving forces, by which the ad- 
vancement of each new age beyond the preceding 
one is to be accomplished. How great the pleas- 
ure of doing any thing to deepen and widen this 
conviction in the community ! 

Each of these connected treatises was intended to 
be a distinct, independent treatment of the topic 
contained in it, by itself ; and yet the topics were 
chosen in reference to their mutual fitness to be 
gathered together into one group. Some of the sub- 
ordinate parts accordingly, come into view again, 
from time to time, but always in a different relation, 
and for another use, like different sides of the same 
sphere revolving before the eye ; each running, as a 
part of one harmonious whole, into and out of the 
others in immediate connection with it. Whenever, 
therefore, the same face or angle of the whole, sub- 
ject comes partially into view again, as in the 



INTRODUCTION. lU 

similar discussion of correlated doctrines in theology 
or philosophy, if it has before received a full treatment 
it is only glanced at, anew, and presented rather 
for its bearings on connected parts, than for what it 
is by itself. And so, if there is at any time a sim- 
ilarity of outline, it will be found that there is a 
variety of details ; or if there should occur in some 
places a general correspondence of details, they will 
be so differently grouped, and placed in such a dif- 
ferent light, as to make quite another scene, and to 
answer entirely other ends. It is hoped that all 
will be deemed to constitute one harmonious whole 
with no part lacking, and none aggravated beyond its 
proper dimensions. 

While abuses of all sorts, dead or alive, have been 
freely attacked, if demanded by a determination to be 
just and true in spirit to so great a theme, no 
wanton wish or willingness has been consciously in- 
dulged, to denoTlnce or satirize any class of men. 
And yet if indifferentism, which is so prevalent in 
this world towards all the great things of Heaven 
and earth, be one of the worst of the many forms of 
human guilt, can any one who sympathizes with 
God and His plans, fail to feel, that it is nowhere 
more misplaced in itself, and more terrific in its 



IV INTKODUCTION. 

results, than in tlie cause of the Higher Christian 
Education. May God speed this divine cause, and 
if the feehle attempt here made can, with His bless- 
ing, he brought to subserve its advancement, may 
He give it, so far, favor and j)ower and true influ- 
ence, to His praise ! 

Dwight's Eueal High School, Clintoet, ) 
Oneida Co., N". Y., August 1, 1859. J 



THE TRUE WORK OF THE HIGHER 
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 



I. 



THE TRUE WOEK OF THE HIGHER 
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

The highest result of any form of civilization, and 
therefore the brightest and topmost flower of Chris- 
tianity, ought to be found in its system of Education : 
in the perfection of beauty visible in its mode of 
training each successive generation for the great 
work of life. Here, if anywhere, its loftiest tenden- 
cies should be sure to culminate : here its ripest 
fruits should hang glittering in the very light of 
Heaven. But were the Christianity of this age 
subjected to such a test, applied unsparingly to the 
aims, ideals, processes , appliances and issues of our 
present style of education, what material might not 
the infidel find for his false and foolish boast, that 
by the very tenor of its achievements its spirit was 
proved to be feeble and its power small, ascribing, 
as he would with wicked logic, to this great divine 



O THE TEUE WORK OF THE 

system of truths and influences the infirmities pre- 
dicable only of those that undertake to manage its 
machinery. 

Our subject demands a twofold treatment : 

I. Of the nobility of the Christian teacher's 
vocation. 

II. Of some of its normal guiding principles. 

I. Its Nobility. — The bearings of the work of 
Education upon the progress of religion ; the rela- 
tions of the school to the great scheme of redemp- 
tion ; the divinity of its office, work and power ; 
these are themes which, although old in Heaven, 
are verily still quite new in this world. Trade, 
politics, fashion, the constant changes of the times, 
and all the petty swell and fall of each day's small 
excitements, suffice to occupy fully the thoughts 
and hearts and tongues of men. But, in respect to 
the uplift of the rising generation to a true com- 
prehension of its duties, interests and labors, to 
whom all earth's history, literature, art, commerce, 
enterprise and religion are so soon to be com- 
mitted ; and who are to have, and to use, accord- 
ing to their will, all that this world contains of 
good, after so long a procession of great influences 
upon it : whose heart seems to be anywhere ablaze 
with high and strong thoughts concerning so divine 
an undertaking ? In the City Above, all their ac- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 9 

cumulated interest during centuries of hope deferred 
for man, and yet of ever-brooding love over him, 
centres in the work that is to be done, well or 
poorly, for God or against Him, to those who are to 
receive, from this generation, the mighty trust of 
the world's fate and fortunes. And, as all the 
vitality and vigor of a plant, when in its perfect 
bloom, are spent in preparing the way for the life 
of its successor, so the proper function of each gen- 
eration of men, when at the height of its develop- 
ment, as of each man in it; : not only their highest 
service, but also their appointed work, the true 
divine use of their time and faculties and resources : 
consists in laboring to prepare the next generation 
to fill worthily the place which they are to vacate 
for them, and to do worthily the work which they 
are to drop into their hands. Looking thus, from 
an earthward stand-point, upon the true sphere and 
scope of the work of education, how vast do we find 
its dimensions ! and how tremendous the pressure 
of its wants upon a heart of true sensibility towards 
God or man ! And how would the highest possible 
earthly estimate of its claims be aggrandized, could 
we but look at it ourselves from a Heavenward 
point of observation ! Could we but get some true 
gauge of the vast inward dignity of the human soul, 
as immortal and divine, and could we feel the power 
of the world to come upon our hearts, in all its 



10 THE TKUE WORK OF THE 

magnificence of wonder and fruition, the employ- 
ment of training one little child to act well its 
part, here and hereafter, would appear at once to 
be grand and godlike. Can the blight of sin upon 
the tenderest sympathies and warmest impulses of 
the human heart, be anywhere found more plain 
and terrible than in the cold, neglectful indifference 
of men, at large, to the highest and best interests 
of the young ? And when we remember how great 
is the furniture of latent capabilities in every one, 
and how much more each man has in his nature 
than either circumstances or his own highest in- 
dustry have ever made visible, and how many more 
might have been evoked, by grand crises or great 
impelling motives exciting them to action, into a 
gigantic demonstration of themselves on every 
varied field of human effort, what an array of splen- 
did possibilities presents itself before the true 
Christian teacher in his work ! 

And, yet, no profession stands in less honor 
with the ignoble mass of minds, proved ignoble by 
so low an estimate of so high a calling, than that 
involving the labor and the art and the joy of 
fashioning the inward man to all nobleness, accord- 
ing to the patterns of things in the skies. A 
painter, who but copies a likeness of the mere face 
of flesh, which is so soon to crumble back to dust ; 
a sculptor, who only carves, in cold and silent 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 11 

marble, an image of our form of clay ; or, a poet, 
who merely describes a man when performing some 
great action, or enjoying the repose to which it en- 
titles him, in order to prepare himself for a greater : 
these are, each of them, honored as artists, and 
even worshipped for their genius. But what of 
him who, with multiform toil and skill, slowly but 
surely shapes the mind, the immortal mind itself, 
into every possible form of strength and grace, and 
who adorns it with all those intellectual and moral 
excellences of which physical beauty, wherever 
found or introduced, is but a faint shadow in mere 
material forms and aspects ? What of him who 
makes the very man what he is, whom others seek 
to find fixed somewhere, in his life, in an engaging 
attitude for their pencil, pen or graver ? He is 
thought by the majority of observers to have 
marked out for himself a very insignificant course 
of life, which no one could possibly pursue who w^as 
not forced to it, by lack of means or want of suc- 
cess, in some other sphere of action. The concep- 
tion that there is in his high calling any thing, or 
rather every thing, fitted to inspire genius, to set on 
fire the whole soul with divine enthusiasm, and to 
summon forth a giant heart upon a pathway of 
ever-abounding activity and joy in its service, 
would seem strange, if not ridiculous, to multi- 
tudes. Some can understand how one might find, 



12 THE TKUE WOKK OF THE 

perchance, in a president's or professor's chair, a 
little pleasure, or, at least, excitement, in the work 
of teaching ; for there is honor in the name. What 
a hanhle ! Honor is not a thing of circumstance, 
but of character ; not of titles, but of actions. 
But how, the wonder is, how can any one find 
aught to captivate and stir his soul in the dull, 
prosaic life of a schoolmaster ? In many commu- 
nities, indeed, this honorable designation stands in 
very much the same repute, for dignity, as the 
names tinker, cobbler, peddler, and the like. And, 
to make the marvel perpetual, that any should ever 
admire the employment of a jiractical teacher, so- 
ciety pertinaciously closes, and keeps closed with 
iron-handed obstinacy, every door to genius in this 
divine occupation, but that which, by the help of 
God, it forces open for itself : offering ordinarily 
but a pittance for one's support, and withholding 
the praise which it bestows on the same amount of 
talent in every other field of demonstration ; while, 
to complete its all but positive interdict, practi- 
cally, upon a calling so noble in itself, and so neces- 
sary to its own continued life and power, it stands 
and gazes agape, in stupid wonder, at such as can 
hear, amid the Babel voices of this world, any loud 
call without, or feel any warm impulse stirring 
within, to enter into its delightful labors. Men 
have an eye for vaulting, momentary heroism ; but, 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 13 

for that of ever-repeated, earnest, glowing, iinselfisli 
toil for others, whether itself seen or unseen and 
whether admired or even despised, embanked and 
embowered, like a strong stream running through 
deep channels, in the truths and the promises of 
God, it has no appreciation. 

The cause of Grod is thus not only everywhere 
cheapened in this world ; hut even the very mode 
and style of His perpetual joyous employment of 
His own infinite powers and resources. The grand, 
ever-active life of God Himself is that of a great, 
wise, infinitely tender and watchful educator of all 
His children. He made the physical universe, in 
order to people it with happy, intelligent beings, 
fashioned in his own image, to enjoy his high com- 
pany forever. And. when having made the theatre 
for their action, and themselves to occupy it, what 
remains to be done but to develop and perfect 
them for his own blissful communion ! Thus the 
very end of creation itself is Education ; and the 
glory of God, as a Creator, terminates in his glory 
as an Educator. Surely what engages his great 
attributes and resources, at all times, in full exer- 
cise, may well employ ours ; and what sufi&ces to 
fill his boundless nature with joy, will suffice cer- 
tainly to fill our own. In nothing does He admit 
us into such grand intimacy with himself, as in the 
work of fashioning character, and of opening and 



14 THE TEUE WORK OF THE 

directing forever tlie latent capabilities and possible 
destinies of tbe immortal mind. Such, yes ! such 
is tlie vocation that even Christian men consider, 
among the commonest in the world, appropriate, in 
its very aims and terms, for men of phlegmatic 
mould, who have not energy enough for traffic or 
political contention, or any such talents as would 
make them shine in some sphere of ostentatious 
self-exhibition ; while, all the time, no calling re- 
quires such a breadth of preparation in order to 
meet its real demands ; none such a variety of all 
high characteristics in combination ; and none so 
much energy bodily, intellectual and spiritual, for 
its right execution. Shame on such base thoughts 
as, consciously or unconsciously, put open dishonor 
on man's nature and on God's ; as well as on all 
the deep spiritual mystery of this life and the 
splendors of the life to come, opening, in full view, 
before the soul that is truly trained to receive and 
enjoy them. All Nature waits on man, to light 
him on his way to Heaven : the mountains stand 
in their quiet strength around him, as if the very 
sentinels of God, to see that he has time and space 
for his work of high self-advancement. For this 
the stars watch over him in their courses ; and for 
this, like ministering angels, the seasons come and 
go in the revolving circle of the year. Nothing on 
earth is great but man : man, made to be within 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 15 

the outward temple of nature erected for his wor- 
ship, himself the soul-temple of Him who, while he 
dwelleth not in temples made with hands, does 
dwell with him who is of an humble and a contrite 
heart. " Lord ! what is man ! " how grand are the 
proportions of his being ! " that thou shouldest be 
mindful of him, and the Son of man, that thou 
shouldest visit him ! " For six thousand years has 
God brooded lovingly over our race, in the outward 
world of sight and sound, so full of change ; and in 
all the inward consciousness of ever wakeful thought, 
in order to attract us, one and all, in our affections, 
to himself. Hail therefore to the men that enter, 
unattended by the crowd, into the deep sympathies 
of His great nature, the very Holy of Holies in his 
heart ; and that earnestly employ their time and 
strength in the same sublime sphere of interest and 
action in which he occupies his whole being. This 
was the business of which the Great Teacher spoke, 
when he said to the mass of indifferent and unem- 
ployed listeners around him, dull-eyed to all true 
conceptions of either God's nature or their own, 
" Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's 
business ! " and this was the work to which he al- 
luded, at another time, when he said, " My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work." 

Like what "a crackling therefore of thorns 
under a pot," full of noise without sense, does it 



16 THE TEUE WORK OF THE 

seem to one, whose ear is open to sucIl voices, to 
hear a parent say, as so many do virtually, and 
some even openly, to a son : '' Choose any calling 
but that of a schoolmaster or a clergyman," as if 
there were any offices so high, to he filled or found 
out of Heaven, "for nowhere will you find such 
toil, and nowhere such poor pay." What pettiness 
is this ! How do such forget that man does not 
live by bread alone ! There was a peculiar signifi- 
cance in the appointment of the great temptation 
of bread to the Saviour, as his first trial in entering 
on public life, as it is under the pressure of this 
temptation that men everywhere so readily suc- 
cumb. Bread ! bread ! the body ! time ! mam- 
mon ! these are the watchwords of the Evil One in 
all ages. But a man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things that he possesseth. There 
is an inner life of the heart, a life full of deejD, glad 
thoughts, affections and impulses, following each 
other in a broad and constant outflow and overflow, 
of which such earthly minds know nothing : the 
life of a magnanimous nature, ever waiting, like 
God himself, to be gracious unto all, and to com- 
municate, without let or hindrance, the riches of 
its goodness unto the whole world of men around. 

In the many appeals made to the young, in 
either brief occasional addresses from our most 
thoughtful earnest men, or in those more formally 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 17 

prepared, with a full circumspection of life and its 
high demands, for our selectest college assemblies, 
who has ever witnessed an effort to stir their sj^irit 
of patriotism, or of general philanthropy, or of large 
Christian usefulness, by the claims and the charms 
of the work of education ? Where is the j)rofessed 
teacher even who is known to publicly magnify his 
office as unsurpassed, if not unequalled, by any 
other in beauty, honor, power and joy ? And, 
even in respect to the chances of emolument, which 
so many covet as the chief recommendation of any 
employment ; although those having such thoughts, 
only or chiefly, are interdicted, by their very lust 
for gold, from entering truly into a vocation that 
demands the utmost purity of sentiment and pur- 
pose, in reference to both its objects and its sub- 
jects : what might not be said, in behalf of a profes- 
sion, where so many openings for enterprise abound, 
as well as so many opportunities for introducing 
higher standards and ideals of achievement ; and 
where noble aims and efforts will be sure to place 
their happy possessor, in such glorious contrast with 
a vast crowd of laborers in the same field? 

We hear the three learned professions often 
alluded to, law, theology and medicine ; as if there 
were not three times three ; as, those of education 
also and of editorship, practical chemistry, civil en- 
gineering, architectural and mechanical drafting 



18 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

and public lecturing. Could any greater tradition- 
ary absurdity be perpetrated than that of leaving 
out from among the learned professions the one, on 
which they all depend for their very existence ; 
especially, when the title itself, Doctor or Teacher, 
given to him who excels in them, is one denoting 
the fact, that now its honored recipient is deemed 
capable of instructing novices, in the elements of 
his vocation ! And what a double dishonor is done 
to the work of education, in not only taking away 
its name, as a profession, but also in transferring 
the very title of those engaged in it to others. 

Let no one enter upon the sublime work of the 
Educator, whose own high appreciation of its value 
does not impel, or, at least, attract him to its de- 
lightful labors. Mean thoughts will infallibly break 
forth, from beneath the surface of whatever enter- 
prise we undertake with them. Let only such come 
into this sacred employment as have heard, in the 
depths of a consciousness illuminated with God's 
felt presence. His voice summoning them impera- 
tively hither. All true hearts have a call from 
him, to do what he appoints ; and no one is asked 
of God to teach, whose heart is not aglow with love 
to him and to man, as his child, and who does not 
feel that nothing on earth has charms to his soul like 
the joy of training his own heart, and the hearts 
of others, to all manliness and godliness. Call 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 19 

it enthusiasm, who will ; still the fact remains, that 
no man ever undertakes to imbed his own character 
and life, deejjly and permanently, in his age, whose 
heart is not on fire with the thought that he is 
working for Grod. Under the power of instincts, 
bruised and broken it is true, but yet divine, the 
ancients felt the near approach of their imaginary 
gods in every thing, and introduced them into all 
their philosophy, poetry, history and art ; and, in 
their dramas, they actually brought them down 
from above, by formal machinery, upon the stage. 
A present deity was the necessary seasoning to a 
Greek's mind, of every thing seen or done in life. 
Here was the power of divination, of augury, of the 
priesthood and of those oracles, which, heard every- 
where as the voice of God, could, at any time, set 
the whole world in motion, or bring it to a sudden 
solemn pause. Thus Homer's heroes were all, to 
the mass around them, Jove-born. So, Numa had 
nightly interviews with the goddess Egeria ; and 
Socrates was guided by an attending genius. And, 
so, the most wonderful of all human lives, for aim 
and scope and energy and issue, the Apostle Paul's, 
became what it was, under the inspiration of that 
great Master, who made it His own meat and drink 
to do his Father's will, by the purpose to know 
nothing among his fellow-men but Jesus Christ, the 
Crucified. The star of destiny, of which Napoleon 



20 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

SO often spoke, was, in Luther's mouth, the word 
and the will of God. So is it always : no man is 
really great whose eye is not ever fixed on what is 
beyond and above. The moral hero is such, be- 
cause he seems to himself to stand, at all times, 
under a vast overshadowing future, as under the 
brow of some high mount of solemn vision. God 
seems over him and around him and within him. 
His life holds its place, as the full moon to the sun, 
directly over against a divine object, and is, in all 
its light and strength, but the manifestation of his 
conceptions of its attractions and demands. " Cast 
ye down her battlements ; for they are not the 
Lord's" — is a sentence written by the angel of 
death, not only on the walls of ancient Jerusalem, 
but also on all other human walls and human plans, 
that are built in a state of separation from God. 

Let no one therefore venture, heedlessly or com- 
plainingly, into this greatest of all human callings ; 
for he goes with such a spirit into the very work 
and presence of God, as a horse into the battle, not 
knowing that it is for his life. My brethren, saith 
the Divine word, " be not many " of you " masters " 
or Teachers ; " knowing that thereby," that is, if 
unfaithful, " ye shall receive the greater condemna- 
tion." But let not him, who finds a soldier's zeal 
stirring in his veins to do battle in so large a field, 
tremble or pause, because of the greatness of the 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 21 

undertaking, God will aid him ; and, if man 
thinks lightly of his toils, Heaven does not. To 
such an one, if to any upon earth, God is ever 
heckoning to mount upwards, with ever new glad- 
ness of spirit, into His own blissful company and 
communion forever. 

In many things, the work of true Christian 
education is above that of the ministry ; if not in 
its aims, yet in the variety, adaptation and power 
of its appliances, and in the immediateness, deter- 
minateness and perpetually renewed productiveness 
of the results gained by their use. The minister 
teaches indeed, but he does not train. He teaches 
at intervals, while the Educator does his work of 
love from day to day. The preacher points to the 
right path, but he cannot make his hearers walk in 
it ; he cannot constrain the will and bind it firmly 
to its duty ; nor can he use the power of personal 
authority and discipline, or bring his own entire in- 
dividuality, with all its freight of knowledge, prin- 
ciple and power, to bear upon his people, as can 
the teacher upon his puj)ils. He devotes his efforts 
also to those whose habits have become thoroughly 
indurated by length of time, and who have long 
since lost their fresh and natural sensibility to the 
truth. The very hearts, all full of the fire and flow 
of youth, which he neglects, the hope of the world 
and of the church, are those on whom the Teacher 



22 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

exerts all liis energy, plastic under tlie gentlest 
touches of his hand, and tenderly responsive to all 
his ideas and feelings. 

To be a true Teacher, of the highest dimensions 
of power and qualification, requires a hreadth of 
resources and qualities natural and acquired, a 
depth and fulness of means, tact in impressing one's 
self on others amounting almost to a species of per- 
sonal magnetism, skill in government, talent in ex- 
position, power in analysis, fulness of knowledge, 
readiness of illustration, a sense of the beautiful in 
nature, art and language, a simplicity of character, 
a singleness of aim, a patience of spirit, a steadiness 
of purpose, an acquaintance with human nature 
and a development of religious feeling and principle, 
as well as an energy of will, a fire of thought and 
an amount of physical vigor ; which, assembled 
together, make this field of human endeavor alto- 
gether paramount to every other in its demands 
upon the whole man, his whole time, his whole 
heart, and his whole strength within and without, 
at all times, in all things. No marvel is it that 
there are so many poor teachers ! for in no other 
style of man is such a height and breadth of man- 
hood necessary, 

II. Some of the great normal principles, of the 
true mode of conducting the Higher Christian Edu- 
cation. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 23 

1st. Its great, all-informing life and spirit must 
be true, earnest, practical Christianity. 

" The truth as it is in Jesus ! " what a volume 
of meaning is there in these few bright words of 
Revelation ! All truth flows out from Him upon 
the universe, and, dispensing its blessings every- 
where, circles round again, with its results, through 
all the vast circumference of things, to the same 
grand reservoir in his heart from which it started. 
He is the way, the truth and the life. Science, 
history, nature, providence, experience, all point to 
Him as the centre of every tiling great and good : 
the All in all, the same yesterday, to-day and for- 
ever. No motor-power can be applied to the in- 
tellect and heart of teacher or scholar, like love to 
him. Every other influence is finite, in its scope 
and duration. No stimulus to effort is worthy of 
man's nature, of his high powers, of his possible 
attainments and pleasures, and of that unending, 
gorgeous future, of which his life here is but the 
vestibule, except that of Christ's love to him and 
his love to Christ. Under the power of steady, 
burning affection for him, all tendencies to waste of 
talent or of time, all aimless, objectless habits of 
thought will disappear as tow before the fire. In 
right relations to him, perpetual joy will be ever 
coursing through the heart, turning what others 
deem life's burdens into its greatest pleasures ; 



24 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

since, carried for him, fhey become labors of love, 
offerings of friendship of a sweet odor, not only to 
him but also to the heart that bears them into his 
presence. V/ith what full concentration of energy 
and delight can a Teacher, under the power of com- 
plete devotion to Jesus Christ, address himself to 
his cherished work : cherished in itself, as having 
great dimensions of its own, cherished in its rela- 
tions to all his personal aptitudes of thought, feel- 
ing and action, and cherished, above all, in its rela- 
tions of service to him who made man, and made 
him to be his own glorious temple forever. How 
can such an one be literally anxious for nothing, 
except to please him who hath called him to enter, 
with Himself, into His own high labor of love. 

There has been so little good education in the 
world, as there has been also so little good govern- 
ment in it, because what toil has been expended 
has not been expended for him. This is the reason 
why the march of the ages has been so slow, and 
that each generation in succession advances so little, 
and with such an agony of effort, beyond the one 
preceding. It is the perpetuation of poor, imjjer- 
fect education at home and at school that keeps up 
such a perpetuation of sin and sorrow in the world. 
When every one teaches for him and studies for 
him, with no stinted outlay of time and money and 
effort, summoning with gladness every moment, 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 25 

every thought and every faculty and appliance, to 
the work of glorifying him in all things, what an 
irrepressible outburst of all manliness and heroism, 
and earnest intellectual activity, and of high litera- 
ture, and of philosophy and poetry, and all human 
greatness and goodness, Avill be exhibited over the 
whole face of human society ! What an argument 
therefore docs the present sad state of our world 
thunder in our ears, for a radical and universal re- 
form in the work of education ! This earth made 
with such variety and fulness of preparation, to be 
the outer court of the world above, has become but 
the purlieus of perdition. Practical heathenism 
everywhere prevails. The world is in a heath- 
state : deserts abound, where the lily of the val- 
ley, the rose of Sharon and the cedars of Lebanon, 
the Lord's cedars for the Lord's house, should be 
found in abundance. 

To the ancients the highest stimulus to action, 
was the desire of fame. To many a man in Chris- 
teadom, a higher impulse has come, although not 
the highest, from a sort of general ethical sense of 
duty, which has been but a merely intensified ex- 
pression for private honor or public expectation. 
Thus Bonaparte used to say that he hated the 
English, because they were always talking so much 
about duty ; and so Lord Nelson said at Trafalgar, 

" England expects every man to do his duty." But 
2 



26 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

how different in its power to stir the conscience and 
to sway the life in any field of effort, is the sense 
of duty, as a mere philosophical or poetical abstrac- 
tion, a misty phantom of the half awakened moral 
natm-e, compared with the vision of duty as an an- 
gel full of heavenly beauty from on high, and as but 
another name for the obligation to love and serve 
Jesus Christ in all things, who is the bright and 
morning-star of time and the glory of eternity. 
Whether for action or endurance, whether for height 
of aim, or breadth of movement or depth of pur- 
pose, whether for energy of mind or health of body, 
whether for greatness of results to others or of en- 
joyment to one's self, there is nothing in the uni- 
verse, that can be for a moment substituted for 
direct, earnest, practical love to the Saviour ; and 
there is nothing, which, brought into comparison 
with it, is not infinitely disparaged by the con- 
trast. 

2dly. The higher Christian education must be 
conducted on the principle that the body is made 
for the mind, rather than the mind for the body. 

Simple as this statement is, its just inferences 
will be found to be quite antagonistic to many of 
the prevailing ideas and modes of education. The 
power of matter over mind is very great, and far 
more determinative of individual and social devel- 
opment than most imagine ; and bodily organiza- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 27 

tion and temperament have much more to do with 
the varieties of intellectual manifestation and moral 
character, than is generally allowed ; but greater 
by far is the influence of the mind over the body, 
over its health, its energy and its beauty. There 
is no stimulus to the circulatory, nervous or even 
muscular system, equal for real inward vitality to 
that of an ever-active, eager, joyous mind, perpet- 
ually travelling on high courses of thought and 
feeling, towards great commanding objects. Heroes 
are always hale : their very thoughts give vigor to 
their nerves ; and men, in the full tide of activity 
and prosperity in business, are usually men of 
abounding health. Success is on this principle, a 
great minister to the welfare of the body. In this 
lies the benefit of travel : it stimulates the mind, 
which in turn excites to favorable action, by the 
impulse of its cheerful sprightly moods of feeling, 
all the forces of the material organism, with which 
it is so strangely and delicately interlinked. The 
true hygiene of the body is mental and moral 
hygiene. Grief wastes, care deadens, and anxiety 
corrodes all the inward subtle vitalities of our being. 
Hence the physiological, as well as spiritual, beauty 
of the rule appointed for us by our great Maker : 
rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice ! 
Joy is ever the deep abiding possession of God's 
heart ; and as our hearts are fashioned to be like 



28 . THE TRUE "WOEK OF THE 

HiSj althougli in siicli diminutive proportions for 
height and scope, such is the state ordained for us, 
to the inspiring vitahzing influence of which the 
working of all our faculties is adjusted. Hence the 
wicked, v.'ho are like the trouhled sea casting up 
mire and dirt, are not to live out half their days ; 
while the righteous sha.ll flourish like the green 
bay-tree ; and hence also the command to children 
to ohey their parents, that they may live long in the 
land. 

The great determining laws, therefore, of our 
compound nature are the laws of the mind. The 
body is made for the mind, as its tabernacle and 
its movable apparatus of mechanical powers, and is 
adapted skilfully to it in all its relations, suscepti- 
bilities and uses, as an engine to the force which is 
to diffuse its energy through all its springs and 
wheels. The conditions therefore of vigor, enlarge- 
ment and conscious pleasure, perpetually, to the 
mind, are the conditions by which the time, 
aims and enterprise of the whole man should be 
gauged. 

And what are these conditions ? They are 
two-fold. The first of them is ceaseless activity in 
gaining knowledge ; so as to come, both receptively 
and potentially, into full relationship, with the 
spirit and the understanding, to the surrounding 
universe, with which it has already so fixed and 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 29 

formal a connection ; and the second is a constant 
earnest outlay of power, as a cause, adequate to 
work effects of its own : ever asserting its appointed 
superiority over all obstacles in its way : taking 
tlie helm, by the divine right of its immortal nature, 
over all the forces and circumstances of life ; and, 
when acting according to its noblest capabilities, 
lavishly bestowing its acquisitions and energies 
upon others, for their profit and their joy. For 
ceaseless action work and progress, the mind is 
made. Without opportunity for them, it stagnates 
at once within itself. Ennui, the only other ele- 
ment necessary to be added in full strength to a 
deep damning sense of guilt, to make a hell on 
earth within the soul itself, extinguishes in its dark 
abyss every treasure and pleasure given to us from 
above. No wonder that men of vacant heads and 
hearts desire, and laugh wildly when uttering the 
wish, " to kill Time," himself indeed their best 
friend, but made by their own misconduct their 
worst enemy ; and that they call their boisterous 
mirth, in attempting to do it, pastime. 

But have not many, even good men, intellectual 
men and professional educators too, views which are, 
practically at least, quite at variance "with these ? 
What multitudes on earth spoil nature, truth, re- 
ligion, life and art, by their own false theories, for 
themselves and others. The mass of men are in- 



30 THE TKUE WORK OF THE 

deed but mere tinkers with tliemselves and with 
every thing on which they lay their hands. Com- 
mend us to the man who receives every thing nat- 
urally into the depths of his being from without, 
and goes forth naturally with his whole soul to 
every outward object from within. Who knows 
where such men are to be found ? Not so perti- 
naciously absurd are the Flathead Indians, in try- 
ing to alter the appointed shape of the head, or the 
Chinese, that of the foot, or a Parisian belle, that of 
the waist, as are vast numbers of even intelligent 
men, in imposing on their hearts and on their 
minds the unnatural restraints often called fash- 
ionable or politic, which they have invented, to the 
full free outburst and force of their inner life : thus 
setting aside with their follies, whether self- origina- 
ted or traditionary, the very ordinances of Grod. 

How many parents, students and teachers, of 
every grade of talent and knowledge, suppose that 
there is something very exhausting and even dan- 
gerous in protracted earnest- study ; and that one 
must treat both his body and mind, in respect to 
mental toil, as if broken vases, that need the most 
careful handling, in order to keep them from falling 
asunder under the pressure of life's burdens. One 
would think that there was enough stolidity in this 
world, without having anv of the leaders of socie- 
ty stultify themselves, to any degree, by theory. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 31 

When a scholar's health fails, it is the common, as 
it is certainly a very easy, solution of the enigma, 
and one which the mass arc always ready to accept 
at once, to say, that he has killed himself by too 
much mental labor. Other men die of all sorts of 
diseases, endemic and epidemic ; but scholars of 
only one, too mucb study. AVith what a show of 
wisdom, that costs nothing but goes fa.r, does many 
a doctor after measuring a youth's pulse that habit- 
ually eats too much, or studies and sleeps in a close 
room, or indulges in vicious habits, say to his par- 
ents, while raising his spectacles and looking gravely 
around, in order to prepare the way for some won- 
derful announcement, " Your son delves too deeply 
into his books ; his brain is large, as migbt of 
course be expected in the noble scion of such a 
noble stock ; let him relinquish all study at once 
and have free scope out of doors " ! The doctor is 
pleased with his own wisdom, and the dispensation 
which it gives him from any farther thought, as 
well as with the fee secured by so little effort : the 
parents are pleased with the distinguished capaci- 
ties of their son, and are willing to abide the need- 
ful time, for their best development ; while the child 
himself is delighted to escape the laws and restraints 
of earnest mental and moral culture, and will tram- 
ple, with as much devotion to theory, as any of the 
parties in the premises, all the treasures that he 



32 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

had begun to gather as an intellectual and im- 
mortal being under his feet. The love of labor, the 
desire for knowledge, . the sense of his own higher 
nature, the training of his mind to right aims, 
efforts, habits and achievements, all these are 
thrown by system, as if doing God himself service, 
like chaff into the fire. The edifice of his future 
character and destiny which a teacher's loving 
hands had been, carefully and prayerfully, con- 
structing with all science and skill, is, from the 
fatal hour described, not only to be neglected and 
to fall into decay; but is even to be zealously pulled 
down to its very foundations. How many has every 
teacher of wide experience thus seen spoiled, forever 
spoiled, that is robbed, for this is the meaning of 
the word, robbed for life of what they might have 
been. Not a greater crisis is it to a tree, to be dug 
up or blown over by the roots when in its full 
summer-bloom. Thoughts, desires, impulses and 
habits, that before were vigorous, are ever after- 
wards paralyzed. The idea has taken possession, 
as if with a demon's spite, of the before glowing 
soul, panting for every excellence, that there is a 
ban in its own feeble nature upon every thing but 
mediocrity and irregularity of effort ; and that 
therefore it must content itself, with being what it 
can, rather than what it would. With what glad- 
ness does he who loves to ruin men, read that uni- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 33 

versal epitaph of all students who die early : " Here 
rests a poor soul who killed himself by hard study." 
The final analysis indeed of the causes of disease 
and death, among professional men generally, is 
thus stated in all directions ; and the form of the 
statement we have copied literally from a recent 
daily paper : " He broke down at last, from the re- 
action upon the system of an overtasked brain." 
How different the idea thus insinuated, about the 
dangerousness of thorough mental industiy, from 
that involved in such commands of God, as " not to 
be slothful in business," " to do what our hands 
find to do with our might " and to remember that 
" herein is our Heavenly Father glorified, that we 
bear much fruit." Well does Satan know that if 
earnest mental toil can be kept at a discount in 
tliis world, a perpetual extinguisher will be thereby 
put upon any large or desirable growth of rehgion 
in society. Who ever thinks of ascribing a scholar's 
poor health to the selfishness of his aims : a fact 
which if true, as in so many cases it is, would alone 
rob him of all the stimulus to action and enjoyment, 
without which the Divine Mind itself, with all its 
other vast resources, would be no longer divine or 
happy, the stimulus of love, as well as the power 
of the greatest of all objective summons, in the 
supreme claims of God upon the soul, to the high 

and broad action of all his faculties. Who refers 

2* 



34 THE TKUE WORK OF THE 

liis maladies, at any time, to the indulgence of 
constant cares and anxieties, wliicli eat away in- 
evitably the root of every lofty sentiment and hope 
that they attack. Without joy, it is as impossible 
for either body or mind to put on beauty or strength, 
or even to keep them when acquired, as for the 
lungs or heart to maintain their normal action, in 
air full of corruption, or for steam to be generated 
in abundance with insufiicient water or fuel. Who 
ascribes the failure of a student's health to constant 
impro|)rieties in food and clothiag ? Who, to that 
almost universal plague of all our houses and public 
buildings, carbonic acid gas, with which almost all 
students, by thoughtless or even wanton indiffer- 
ence to the subject, allow themselves to be sur- 
rounded and poisoned, both by day and night ? 
No wonder that such need frequent vacations, and 
that both teachers and scholars, of such a sort, are 
ready to volunteer their testimony to the exhaustive 
effects of real study. Many even imagine them- 
selves half ready to go mad, at times ; they are 
such amazing thinkers ! and then how many stories 
are there, of brain-cracked geniuses, as of heart- 
broken lovers : and what an armiment against beinsc 
a genius, or ever indulging in love ! But a really 
great student is, in this country at least, a rare 
specimen of our race. It has never been the au- 
thor's lot, although associated with scholars all his 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 35 

days, to come in contact with a man, who coiilcl 
justly he descrihed as hurting himself by hard 
study. The nearest apparent approximation to 
such a fact, to he found within the bounds of his 
experience, occurred in the case of that distinguished 
oriental scholar, Nordheimer, who died so soon after 
coming to this country ; but, on inquiry of him it 
proved, that the cause of tlie injury done to his 
health was not too vigorous action of the mind as 
such, but too little sleep ; since, for years he had 
allowed himself, when in Grermany, but three hours 
repose at night, and that on three chairs, in full 
dress, under the call of an alarm-clock. Such sys- 
tematic self-abuse would have killed any one, but 
an enthusiastic, happy student, long before it did 
that devoted and spirited linguist. 

Nothing, next to worship and direct beneficence 
to others, so fills the heart with such sweet all-per- 
vasive satisfaction, as active and energetic habits of 
thought, perpetually busy in exploring the outer 
universe which God has made, and the inward rela- 
tions of science, doctrine, providence or secondary 
agency, by which its wondrous harmonies are fash- 
ioned and established. Let earnest vigorous study 
abound, not only for its own sake but also as one of 
the surest means of bodily health ; but always let 
it be with a brain supplied, as freely in doors with 
air, vital air, as if out of doors. There is nothing 



36 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

that tliis age, from whatever point we survey its 
wants, needs more, physically, intellectually and 
morally, than thorough ventilation. 

And yet a voice has been recently raised, a pro- 
fessional voice from one of our large cities, and mul- 
tiplied with many echoes through the public press, 
as if place and form and re|)etition might give it 
some importance, warning our Boards of Education 
to reduce at once the term of daily study in the 
Public Schools to three hours, as a matter of simple 
duty to the next generation. Quite as good advice 
would it be, for the physical profit of the coming 
age, to propose a general public administration 
daily of opium to the whole community of young- 
sters, in order to make them keep their limbs still 
long enough to accumulate a little more fat. The 
bane of this world now is too little thought, too 
little study, too little growth and grasp of mind, 
too little occupation with the objects of reason, 
science, truth and faith. 

The fountain of perpetual youth in the heart 
has often been said to be Poetry ; it should rather 
be called Thought : thought in whatever high earn- 
est form, but especially in those forms which are 
most full of activity without, and gladness within. 
MerchantSj farmers, mechanics and others, if arriv- 
ing at extreme old age, often if not generally pass 
away from earth through the cloud of second child- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 37 

hood. But thinkers, scholars, philosophers, poets 
have, in great nnmbers, like Samuel Johnson dying 
when 76 j'cars old ; Leibnitz when 70 ; Sir Wil- 
liam Herschel when 84 ; Goethe when 83 ; our 
own Emmons* when 95 ; or Alexander Humboldt, 
who has just deceased at 90 and over ; and Jacob 
Grimm now abounding in many and great labors, 
at the age of more than 70 ; been hale and healthy, 
with the fire of their youth undimmed in their eye, 
and the natural strength of their heart unabated, to 
the end. 

When one points to the Germans, as a hardy 
long-lived happy nation of severe students, the re- 
ply is often made : " Oh yes ! but the climate of 
Germany is very different from this : there is some 
undefinable element, unfortunately, quite peculiar 
to our North American atmosphere, that forbids here 
such close, mental application." How strange that 
no one has ever discovered the influence of this 
marvellous fact U23on our bodily characteristics and 
enjoyments ! But no ! that would not be a profit- 

* In " The Reflections of a Visitor, in Ide's Memoir of Emmons " 
(Vol. 1, p. 169 of Introduction) occurs the following passage, of 
special interest in this connection: "The clergy of New England 
tasked themselves, as if they were of antediluvian mould. We read 
of the two Edwardses, Hopkins, Smnlley, Stiles, Chauncey and 
Dwight as at their books thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and sometimes 
eighteen hours of the day. Dr. Emmous, in this respect equalled 
any of them." 



38 THE TEUE WOKK OF THE 

able part of the plan of " the mystery of iniquity," 
in the world. It is only the mind, and that only 
in its higher uses and attainments, that is endanger- 
ed in our too oxygenated, or changeable, or other- 
wise faulty, atmosphere. We are indeed a nation 
of dyspeptics, but not because the air given to us 
to breathe is not as good as that of any other nation 
under heaven ; but because all our arrangements 
are adapted to exclude it, and to substitute in its 
place the most deadly gas on earth : necessary in- 
deed to all vegetation, and so indirectly necessary 
to us : a part of all the beauty of nature, and of 
the very sustenance of life, but yet itself directly 
fatal to our lungs and nerves. We read almost 
daily of persons suffocated in vats and subterranean 
caves and old wells ; and yet, shutting our doors 
and windows with great care, as we retire to sleep, 
as if purposely to shut out the presence of our best 
friend, we prepare for ourselves systematically a 
bath of the same poison in our chambers and rise 
out of it in the morning, as from our seats also in 
churches, lecture-rooms, concert-halls and railroad 
cars, sick and ready to say, like the youth in Scrip- 
ture returning from the field to die, and for the 
same reason, because the hand of death is resting, 
for the time, upon our shoulders : " my head ! oh 
my head ! '"' And how do multitudes continue the 
same course of constant self-poisoning day after 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 39 

day, sick and discouraged, and wonder why God did 
dash our cup of earthly sweets with so many daily 
ills, and long for their spiritual hody, as one, that, 
in a better sphere, shall be ever free from all the 
trials of their mortal life. Our common form of 
salutation, in meeting each other, however casually, 
is one that implies that every man expects to find 
his neighbor ailing in some way. The only ventila- 
tion to which most have yet attained, whose eyes 
are at all open to its necessity, amounts simply to 
great care to ventilate one's rooms, after they have 
left them ; as if out of res23ect to the general clean- 
liness of the house itself, instead of ventilating 
them, when present themselves to enjoy the benefit 
of such ever-changing, pure, refreshing air, as God 
himself always carefully gives to those who take the 
air as he furnishes it for them, in the outer temple 
of His works. How strange that the first prescrip- 
tion given by the physician to a valetudinarian, 
" to take the air," every day, and more and more 
according to his strength, should never be thought 
of afterwards by him as a rule of health when 
well ; or that any one should suppose, that it is any 
the less healthy, when taken pure in doors, than 
when taken out of doors. There never was a nation 
that closeted itself, on theory, in confined apart- 
ments, like our own : not the Greeks or Romans, 
whose life was literally an out-of-door hfe ; nor the 



40 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

Germans French or EnglisH, who are all much 
more addicted to the air, than are we. And what a 
terrible compensation do we receive for such utter 
neglect of the essential conditions of health, in our 
two great national diseases, dyspepsia and con- 
sumption ! 

In what weak and even dishonorable ways, do 
good men, so called, often speak of God ! A youth, 
for example, violates all the rules of health and the 
conditions of protracted life, and ere long by an ac- 
cumulation of many transgressions, each small and 
unnoticed at the time, brings on a crisis which he 
alone has prepared ; and parents and friends stand 
gazing and wondering at the scene, and exclaim, 
" what a pity ! what a mysterious providence ! that 
such a charming youth should fall so suddenly and 
so early, in the field." 

Many, if not most, of our colleges and boarding 
schools are quite entitled to be called, slaughter- 
houses : so great is the sacrifice in them of health 
and strength. College classes, often, and it is be- 
lieved generally, contain at their graduation but 
half of the whole number that have belonged to 
them throughout their course. Half have fallen by 
the way, during four years ; and this of boys from 
the best families of the land : all of course, as most 
people please the devil in thinking and saying, by 
hard study. The necessity of an actual and con- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 41 

stant change of the air to be breathed, by day and 
night, whether taking it as prepared by the Maker 
of it and us, or preparing it for ourselves, is a fact 
yea a law not yet khown, or, if known, recognized 
by teachers in our colleges and seminaries ; who sit 
themselves in close rooms all day long, and hear 
their recitations in narrow apartments, breathing 
with thirty or forty pupils, for two and three hours 
daily, air that is made unfit for respiration in a 
few minutes : not only not insisting on a perpetual 
renovation of the air themselves, but laughing 
heartily or at least secretly at those who do, as 
being crotchety and angular enough in their views : 
not seeing meanwhile, as those around them do, in 
their own pale faces and slow gait and languid 
manner, that they are steadily and surely drinking 
every day for themselves a draught of the cup of 
deatli. 

3dly. Another of the great guiding principles 
in the work of the higher Christian education, one 
fundamental to its right prosecution is this : that 
true education is, in each individual case, a develop- 
ment of what is within, instead of an accretion from 
without. 

On this cardinal idea hinge many subordinate 
ones of importance. The teacher who has such a 
conception of his work will regard the stimulation 
of his pupil's mind to great wakefulness and energy 



42 THE TEUE WOPK OF THE 

of action, as one of bis own perpetual duties and 
pleasures. The art of successfully stimulating 
another's mind to ever higher thoughts and nobler 
aims, is, whether for subjective intellectuality or 
objective usefulness, one of the highest of all arts. 
He will accordingly address himself, as does an en- 
thusiastic gardener to the work of cherishing and 
perfecting a favorite plant, to the grand inspiring 
enterprise of educating, that is, as the word signi- 
fies in its component elements, constantly educing 
or drawing out, all the hidden riches of his scholar's 
whole inward self, as prepared by his Maker with 
all wisdom and love for the very purpose of such 
education. The stimulation that a loving Christian 
teacher will be ever bringing to bear, with the great- 
est possible intensity of force and constancy of ap- 
plication, upon a younger mind which God in his 
providence has given to him to train for him, while 
it will have within it all the constraints and pres- 
sure and goading impulse of authority and law, 
will yet be charged to fulness, like God's own style 
of government and influence over his intelligent 
creatures, with all winning, inviting, beckoning 
elements of thought and feeling and manner. Such 
a teacher will be ever iu the van of his work, and 
of his pupils, bearing the banner before them of the 
highest possible progress in it. How different such 
treatment of a scholar, in its influence upon him, 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 43 

compared with that of indulging him in his own 
idea's and vvaj^s, for which he may often ask and 
indeed stand waiting, as a j^rivilege, only to despise 
him who ought to refuse it, if, on the contrary, he 
weakly grants its bestowal. In the one case, the 
pupil's real good is seen and felt to be the starting 
point and inspiration of every movement ; in the 
other, he is his own guide ; and the teacher is 
rightly viewed, as both intellectually and morally, 
incompetent for the post of leadership. 

On the doctrine, that true education is a devel- 
opment, and not an accretion, hangs also the farther 
idea, that its great object is thorough mental dis- 
cipline, and not a mere accumulation of knowledge. 
The mind is to be trained to do each part of its 
appointed work in life, in the most perfect manner 
possible, whether in the form of endurance or of 
action. Drill makes the scholar, as it makes the 
soldier : steady, sturdy drill. Difficulties must be 
set before him, and when in his ignorance or slug- 
gishness he draws back from the effort necessary to 
conquer them, he must be held jiersistently to the 
task. This is God's mode of developing talent, 
enterprise and piety in His kingdom : to set over 
against men the trials and necessities of life, in 
such a way for nurabej- and size, that, if they do not 
arise and crush them, they must be inevitably 
crushed by them. By making however the efforts 



44 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

adequate to a triumph, the soul is lifted up into 
the atmosphere of a new consciousness of itself and 
of a new vision of its privileges. Not only is it 
more blessed to give than to receive, but the active 
pleasures of our being, generally, are higher than the 
passive. God has therefore placed the prizes of 
earth and of heaven so near us, as to invite our 
desires by their size and their beauty, and yet so 
much above us, that we must climb hard and high, 
in order to obtain them. So must we purposely 
cast the pupil upon his own resources, and disci- 
pline him, not only to rely upon himself and do his 
own work, but also, when he does it, to do it with 
all his might, that neither he nor his Maker may be 
robbed, at any time, of the proper results of his 
agency. 

The idea that all real education is a develop- 
ment, instead of an accretion, will make its pos- 
sessor j if himself educated, an artist in his work. 
A true teacher is the greatest of artists. Every 
part of his work is carefully designed. He studies 
the mind itself, that he may comprehend fully what 
are its necessities, and what are its capabilities, as 
well as what are its germinal elements, and also 
their inward processes of growth. He studies the 
universe of matter and mind, without, that he may 
rightly understand the scope and field and forms 
of human activity. He studies life itself, its many 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 45 

phases, wants and issues. Thus armed, he lays out 
every energy, with study and prayer and ingenu- 
ity and watchful observation, to edace and exalt all 
the fundamental capacities of his pupil's whole na- 
ture into full harmony with themselves^ and into 
full correspondence with the many duties and op- 
portunities of the world around him. Had ever 
any other artist so wide a field, or so high a worlv, 
or so splendid a train of results attending him ? 
For the better appreciation of liim and of his work, 
consider what are the achievements of a true edu- 
cation. 

§ 1. He who has obtained it has obtained the 
full use and possession of himself. The acts and 
states of his mind are under his own control, in re- 
spect to their direction, continuance and force. He 
has passed out of his state of intellectual childhood, 
when he had eyes but could not see, and ears but 
could not hear, all the glorious things around him 
and above him. He is, under the King of kings 
and Lord of lords, himself the lord of the world 
within, not in feeling as inflated with pride, but 'in " 
fact, as the conscious owner and manager of its 
great and complicated forces. 

§ 2. He is in a state not only of natuial, but 
also of skilfully developed, responsiveness to all 
influences and summons from without. The great 
argument of universal nature to every attentive ob- 



46 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

server is beauty, perpetual divine beauty by day 
and night, in the heavens above and the earth be- 
neath and the waters that are under the earth. 
That beauty he sees, he feels, everywhere ; and his 
heart looks out upon it, from a throne of gladness, 
rejoicing in it and in Him who made it for the 
pleasure of his earthly children. 

The argument of humanity, as he gazes upon 
its dark waters, foaming out their own sin and 
shame, is pity. From every quarter he seems to 
himself to be implored for help and he hails the 
universal summons. He would do service to his fel- 
lows. True manliness seems to him to be essen- 
tially demonstrative of itself and perpetually com- 
municative of its treasures unto all men. 

And, as to the sweet influences from above 
distilling forever upon him from his Father's heart 
on high, they give him all the flavor of life. Hence 
comes the light, hence fall the showers, by which 
every grace and virtue in his heart are nourished. 
To smile with joy in the beams of His presence, to 
be' covered with the adornments of his spirit, to 
minister to his glory and pleasure, is the very sum- 
mit of his desires and endeavors. His whole aim in 
life is to make, on the one hand, the greatest possi- 
ble use, as the steward of Grod, of all privileges be- 
stowed upon him, and, on the other, the greatest 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 47 

possible outlay of every faculty and resource, as his 
loving friend, in the promotion of his kingxlom. 

§ 3. He is in a state of perpetual normal growth, 
in susceptibility, power, usefulness and enjoyment. 
The main result of education, as a developing pro- 
cess, is " to draw out " the inner life of the man, 
in right proportions and into right directions. How 
often do we hear of a finished education ! The 
word is a misnomer : the conception is an impossi- 
bility. Not more deficient in finalities is eternity 
itself, than the mind of man. The scope of a true 
education is unlimited and illimitable. The intel- 
lect possessing the greatest dimensions of power or 
of attainment on earth, stands but at the first be- 
ginnings of a series of endless progressions. But, 
to start rightly, to go forth towards the true objects 
of our being in a true manner : this is the problem ; 
and the high divine work of the educator is, to ini- 
tiate those forms and habits of thought and feeling, 
of aim and action, out of whose full-flowing influ- 
ence may be realized to their possessor, by the very 
necessity of cause and efiect, in ever unfolding man- 
ifestation, the highest, broadest, richest future, of 
which the soul is capable. 

What a work of art, therefore, of sublime and 
altogether unappreciated art, do the achievements 
of a real education show a true teacher's labor of 
life to be ! 



48 THE TRUE WORK OP THE 

4tlily. Another of tlie great normal guiding prin- 
ciples, in the work of the higher Christian educa- 
tion, is this : that its ultimate end to the individual 
is character. 

As the scale of life's activities and pleasures is 
three-fold, bodily, intellectual and spiritual, and in 
the spiritual the others find their culmination and 
fulfilment ; so is it with the developments of our 
nature itself. The moral is the pinnacle of our 
whole being. The starting-point, as the terminus, 
of all virtue or vice and of all good or evil, expe- 
rienced or performed, are there. All the wondrous 
attributes of God draw their light and heat, their 
worth and beauty, from the central, all-controlling 
attribute of his love. It is God's character alone 
that makes him God, or that makes this universe 
properly His universe. But for his capacity for 
character, man would have no powers to be desired : 
none, that would not deserve to be dreaded, as pow- 
ers fitted only to lash and torment and destroy 
each other, in an uproar of never-ending contradic- 
tions. Whatever therefore is done in the work 
of education in a true way, must not only be done 
with design and skill ; but there must be also an 
ever-present, ever-constraining reference to the ques- 
tion of its influence upon the character of the jDupil, 
the final issue of all the labor bestowed upon him 
there. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 49 

Character is commonly of a wild hap-liazard 
growth, in this world. The very phrase Subjective 
Art, and much more the statement, that this is the 
highest of all arts on earth or in Heaven would 
seem to many who suppose themselves to be edu- 
cated Christian thinkers, a singular novelty. And 
yet there is nothing that mortals can do, which in- 
terests God in them personally, except the work of 
adorning themselves with those ornaments of the 
heart, which are in his sight of great price. True 
education makes the man himself, and not some 
mere outside addition to him, however beautiful or 
imposing. Every thing else is but a means to this 
great end : the building uj) of the inner temple of 
the soul, or the transfusion of as many divine ele- 
ments of thought and feeling, as possible, into the 
whole inner framework of one's being, as its perma- 
nent characteristics and its great ruling forces. 
Without such ideas and aims in his work, the 
teacher walks in a low and narrow path indeed ; 
but with them he walks on the very Highway of 
holiness, on which prophets and apostles and God's 
great army of heroes have ever gone up into the 
skies. 

All true mental and moral growth is self-growth : 
progress made for one's self by continued effort in a 
right direction, under the perpetual stimulus of a 
right will. Not the few who without many advan- 



50 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

tages yet distinguisTi themselves, but all, witli ad- 
vantages or witliout tliem, are self-made : some, 
indeed with greater facilities, purer models and 
more inspiring influences than others ; hut all, self- 
made. A splendid character is hut the splendid 
accumulation, of a vast number of right choices and 
right deeds : the soul's own pile of all its past ideas 
and hopes : itself, in every thing that it has done 
and desired to do, throughout its entire history. 

As every thing in the universe has its uses out 
of itself, in a grand harmony of connections, de- 
pendences, influences and results ; and every thing 
material was made for something moral ; and things 
bodily and intellectual always culminate in things 
spiritual : so, to display character on God's part, 
and to form it on the part of His creatures, these 
are the ends, for which the whole universe was made. 
Time, space, creation, providence, redemption, all, 
have their common end and function here. The 
High Priest of this holy work on earth is the 
teacher. And what is to be his ideal of his calling, 
and of its true results ? The elements of it are to 
be found in all the actual and all the possible of 
greatness and goodness, in all time and eternity and 
in all Heaven and earth. As the true conceptional 
model of any species of plant or animal, cannot be 
found in any one individual of the species in fact, 
but must be an aggregate of the excellences of all 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 51 

individuals combined, so, the true ideal of human 
development must be composed of an assemblage of 
all the most bright and beautiful attainments of 
intellect, wisdom, science and skill, and of all the 
most lovely traits and noble dispositions conceiv- 
able of the soul. Unlike other artists, the Chris- 
tian educator is not left to form that ideal for him- 
self ; for it stands before his eye, in a beauty and 
magnificence all its own, in the person, life and 
spirit of Jesus Christ ; who came on earth not 
simply to die for us, but also, although forgotten 
by so many, to live for us, and to teach us in such 
a way, how to live for each other : telling us that 
except we have His spirit we are none of His. 

The whole end therefore of all true education is, 
on the one hand, to make the pupil like Christ in 
his character and in the style and sphere of his out- 
ward activity, and, on the other, to qualify him 
most thoroughly to fill out, at all times, the com- 
plete dimensions of his being with the greatest 
possible use of his time and strength and oppor- 
tunities for him. " Look to J.esus " ! is to be there- 
fore the one bright radiant guiding motto of the 
school-room, as of t^^e church and the household. 

5thly. It is also a normal, guiding principle in 
the work of all true education : that the highest 
influence that can be brought to bear upon it by 
the teacher, is that of his own personality. 



52 THE TRUE WOEK OF THE 

The greatest influence exerted by any man is 
that which is insensible. Occasional influence is 
but the influence of occasions ; which have, from 
their very infrequency and temporary duration, but 
little effect upon the great current of human affairs. 
But the influence of ourselves, our own real char- 
acter, example and spirit : this is a light that 
shines for good or evil everywhere around us, and 
that makes us an epistle, known and read of all 
men. As great as is the sublimity of his vocation, 
and the wide and lasting reach of its results, so 
great is the pressure of obligation upon the teacher, 
to be magnanimous himself in his aims and efforts, 
and to be a true man before G-od. The nearest 
merely human model of the true style of spirit, 
which an educator should possess, is furnished in 
the laborious untiring joyous life of that wonder- 
ful worker for God and man, the Apostle Paul. 
Had he, instead of being a preacher to the Gentiles, 
undertaken to serve Christ with the same heroic 
earnestness and faith and prayerfulness, in the work 
of educating the young for him, he would have best 
exemplified, thus far in the world's history, what 
wonderful elements of power belong to this sublime 
vocation. He gave himself wholly to the work of 
inspiring others with true views of life and of the 
glory of the world to come : all his plans were grand 
and all his ideas heroic. 



HIGHEK CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 53 

No influence can be exerted in this world so 
great, next after God's, as that of one man directly 
upon another. We dwell indeed, so far as any in- 
ward personal inspection of ourselves is concerned, 
but that of the All-searching eye above, in a closed 
castle, each one shut up within himself in the 
temple of his own body ; but in our occupations, 
aims and habits, in our desires and hopes and 
pleasures, in our features, gestures, footsteps, tones 
and in all that we leave undone and unregarded, we 
are perpetually and unconsciously revealing what 
we are, and inworking the very substance of our 
hidden selves into the characters and destinies of 
others. Individual, personal influence is the great- 
est earthly force in kind, that resides in any human 
organization or movement. One great reason, ac- 
cordingly, why good results are so few and .so tem- 
porary in the working of the vast social machinery 
of life, whether in the Church or in the world with- 
out, is because of the general low estimate of the 
largeness of individual obligations and individual 
privileges. 

Where, then, shall a student, whose heart is on 
fire with high thoughts of his own nature made in 
the image of God, of the great work of life to be 
done for Him, and of the splendors of an eternal 
future to be spent in his presence : where, shall 
such an one, eager to make the largest possible 



54 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

preparation, in intellect and character, for running 
tlie race of life like a hero, find a company of 
teachers whose eyes and hearts burn with the same 
zeal for his good, men full of all great strong loving 
thoughts and showing it, in every kind of genial, 
generous, kindling look and word and way ? Alas ! 
routine takes, almost everywhere, the j)lace of daily, 
hearty, skilful effort to stimulate and develop, in 
every way, his whole nature. Mechanism is the 
main reliance, and not ever wakeful personal love, so 
earnest that it will not brook the denial of the ob- 
ject at which it aims, the puj)irs greatest and best 
advancement in all things. How sere and stale is 
the experience of many teachers, after persisting a 
few years in such terrific trifling with the amazing 
capabilities and issues of their divine calling ! Quite 
as many sear their consciences, as with a hot iron, 
by a series of awful negligences, as others do by a 
series of overt crimes. There are also those who 
undertake not only to account for dull mechanical 
habits of teaching, but even to justify them by the 
plea, that the teacher has too many under his care 
to cultivate a special interest in each and every par- 
ticular pupil. How unlike God is such an one, in 
the tone of his heart, who feels ever restrained by 
the want of more recipients of His love ; so that 
however gracious he is at any time he is always 
waiting to be more so. Love grows by indulgence. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 55 

The very fact of numbers and of their continual 
succession, and so of the ever renewed calls for fresh 
toil and skill which their wants present in con- 
stant repetition, is a perpetual reiteration of pleas- 
ure to the teacher who loves his work. But that 
there should be such constant sameness in the style 
of his labors, is, in the eyes of most, the greatest 
drawback upon their pleasureableness. All such, 
as do not feed on great ideas, but live only on 
novelties and changes, would soon tire of the long 
labors of a true teacher's life, although so grand in 
their results. But novelty is neither needed nor 
felt as a spur to effort by a noble soul. The In- 
finite Mind finds perpetual joy in perpetual work, 
with no novelty whatever. And since God, from 
the very infiniteness of his knowledge and pleasure, 
can have at no time any new idea or experience, he 
satisfies the wants of His vast nature, in leading his 
creatures into ever new knowledge and ever new 
gladness of spirit ; and surely to the finite mind 
also the communication of new wisdom and new 
goodness to other minds is greater joy than the 
reception of them, in whatever surprising forms of 
novelty to one's self 

But what dull views of life must he have, who 
can complain of a teacher's duties, as monotonous. 
And, pray, tell us where is the monotony? Cer- 
tainly not in the objects of his zeal who are always 



56 THE TRUE "WORK OF THE 

coming and going upon the stage : not, in the degree 
of their natural capacities or personal acquirements, 
nor, in sameness of results under the most skilful 
and laborious culture. In the healing art which 
captivates so many, there are but two great secrets 
for the practitioner to solve : to diagnose well, so 
as really to find the actual disease, as it is ; and the 
other, to be equally wise in discovering the one 
exact remedy. And yet, what material for con- 
stant excitement and pleasure, does the devotee to 
this noble profession find, in traversing each of these 
fields of research ! And can any one think, that, 
in the school-room, there can be any less oppor- 
tunity or necessity for thoroughly studying human 
nature generally, or personal idiosyncracies in par- 
ticular, than for studying the secret hidings of dis- 
ease in the sick chamber ; or any less exhilaration, 
in carrying points of order, instruction, discipline 

and personal influence, with tact and effect, in the 

A, 

character, than in sending away some brief pain or 
sorrow from the tabernacle of the flesh, No man 
has the spirit of a true teacher, who does not, each 
day, enter into the toils of his work, as a strong 
bold swimmer leaps joyously into the moving tide, 
as the element in which he must be in order to be 
happy. If there is any employment upon earth, 
that to be rightly executed enlists and demands 
every faculty, energy and resource of a man's whole 



HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION. 57 

complex being, however armed with intellect or 
character, natural or acquired, it is surely this one ; 
and he, who can make it seem dull and monotonous, 
infallibly stamps himself thereby to his own con- 
sciousness, as a man both of feeble ideas and also 
of a very low range of moral feeling. 

Mach is said of the ingratitude of youth, as a 
great offset to any high sentimentalism about the 
pleasure of devoting one's self to their education. 
Those who encounter their ingratitude, usually de- 
serve it. Children are never more quick, than in 
finding their true friends. The logic of their in- 
stincts is swift and unerring. It requires real 
nobility of soul, rightly to manage and mould child- 
hood. Few possess true benevolence enough, to put 
on the patience necessary for the right conduct of 
any large plans for their good. Few are divine 
enough in the temper of their souls, to make it 
desirable, for the church or the world, to commit to 
them the formation of the rising generation. If en- 
gineers for public improvements, and those who 
guide the affairs of State, need to be men of mark 
for their wisdom and efficiency, what should be the 
high qualifications of those who form the very men, 
for whom all civil and even material things exist, as 
those who are to be educated by them and among 
them, for an entrance ere long into grander scenes 



58 THE TRUE WORK OF THE 

and nobler society, and a life of ever bright and joy- 
ous experience on high. 

6thly. Another guiding principle, in the work 
of the Higher Christian Education, pertaining to it 
as a whole, is one of intellectual and moral econo- 
mics : so to manage it, as to bring it to the great- 
est actual productiveness possible. 

A real issue in the best attainable results, or a 
natural full tendency to such an issue, is the gauge 
by which we measure the moral quality of any ac- 
tion or combination of actions. The results of the 
present educational system of this country, as in- 
deed also of this age, are not satisfactory. They 
are right, in neither quality nor quantity. Who, 
that is engaged with all his might of intellect and 
heart in the profession, does not feel what heights 
of excellence there are in it, yet untrodden ? And 
who that has obtained an education, of the best 
tyj)e yet afforded, does not often say to himself : 
" What awful mistakes were made, in my educa- 
tion ! Had my teachers but seen things in their 
true relations : had they been deeply freighted, 
themselves, with knowledge and thought and love, 
and moved forward in their work with all the en- 
ergy of their whole united nature : had they but 
known my weaknesses and my wants, my hidden 
energies and my blind indeed but active impulses, 
ever to be and to do something greater and better. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 59 

I knew not what : had they but really loved me 
and given themselves, heart to heart, to me : what ! 
oh what might I not have become ! I am and I 
must ever be, from their fault, but the shadow of 
my own real self, as God made me to be and to 
stand up in his presence on the earth." 

The economical working of the educational 
forces of the age demands that as little waste, as 
possible, should be allowed in the result. It is not, 
by any means, a matter of indifference who advances 
and who does not under the instruction given. To 
fall back stolidly on a sense of one's own dignity, 
which alas ! in such a case is utterly wanting : to 
comfort one's self, without any earnest self-inquisi- 
tion or vigorous effort to amend the difficulty, in 
respect to the poor progress of a pupil, by his sup- 
posed dulness of nature, a dulness which is com- 
monly indeed only supposed and not real : to habit- 
uate one's self to the idea of moving on contentedly, 
with the mere use of means and appliances, without 
reference to their effect : is not this to be a driveller 
in one's ideas, a spendthrift of one's resources and 
to be a man utterly deficient, not only in all true 
conceptions of art in fashioning character and des- 
tiny, but also of mere industry and even of honor, 
decency or duty, before either God or man ? But 
are there none such, in this sacred calling ? Yea ! 
rather are there not many, in every department of 



60 THE TKUE WOKK OF THE 

itj low-browecl men, indifferent in their walk and 
speecli, wlio consider not only their own employ- 
ment, unsurpassed as it is in value and dignity by 
any other upon earth, but also life itself a drudgery. 
Such are the men that teach, because they do not 
know what else to do ; that never give new ideas to 
their pupils, because they have none themselves ; 
and, provided that they keep their hours and stick 
to their book and continue some how to look and 
act, as if they knew a good deal more than they do, 
believe that they surely quite equal the mechanical 
demands of their mechanical work. And these 
men, leaving to fate or chance the results of their 
agency or rather want of agency, look with as un- 
moved hearts upon an utter destitution of all good 
effects or even an abundance of evil effects around 
them, as could so many wooden men themselves. 
They are but mere apologies for teachers. Out of 
many institutions not more than half, and out of 
most not so many, come forth with any real prepa- 
ration for the work of life or any earnestness of 
spirit to undertake it. The amount of waste, in 
nearly every case, is indeed terrific. 

The aim should be, on the contrary, more eagerly 
and persistently kept, to achieve the greatest possi- 
ble results, of which either the true system of Chris- 
tian education itself is capable, or those, on whom 
it is brought to bear, have capacity in themselves 



HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION. 61 

for development, than, in the world of business, the 
merchant or manufacturer maintains in conducting 
his affairs. His will works steadily and effectively 
towards its proper goal, like the most finished engi- 
nery under the power of steam. 

Heaven and earth call loudly, for earnest, work- 
ing, joyous laborers in great numbers, in the sub- 
lime work of educating the rising generation, for 
the honors, duties and enjoyments of true manhood. 



II. 



THE TRUE STYLE AND MEASURE OP THE 
HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 



II. 



THE TRUE STYLE AND MEASURE OF THE 
HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

He who should carefully measure the dimensions of 
man's whole complex beings and conceive of him as 
in a state of full preparation, in respect to aU his 
powers, for the issues of both time and eternity, 
would be best able to appreciate and determine the 
true style of his education. And yet how far would 
be the thoughts of such an one, if of earth, from 
filling the entire horizon of the subject ! 

As it is our design, in this essay, to furnish but 
a general map of what belongs to the full-orbed idea 
of real education, it will be impossible to dwell at 
length upon any one part of it. The following 
view, it is believed, will furnish an outline, at least, 
of what ought to be included in the idea of a com- 
plete education. 



66 THE TEUE MEASUBE OF THE 

First, In reference to tlie body. 

Our physical system is certainly the basis, while 
we are in this world, for the manifestation of all the 
rest of our nature, whether to our own consciousness 
or to the eyes of others. Our intellectual and moral 
faculties abide in it as their tabernacle, and work 
through it, as their instrument, upon the surround- 
ing universe. While fastened to the body, therefore, 
and compelled to receive all our impressions and 
enact all our deeds through it, it is a matter of great 
moment what its best condition and development 
demand. 

Grod, himself, always places the physical first, in 
both individual and national advancement. And 
how, in preparing the way for his church, so dear to 
him that her name has been always graven upon 
the palms of his hands, did he deal with her, as we 
do with children, in her earlier years : educating 
her by appeals to the senses, at the first, in impres- 
sive forms, ordinances, ceremonials, and symbols. 
First, that which is natural, saith Paul, and then 
that which is spiritual. 

Men are now, indeed, beginning to reahze the 
vast importance of a right physical education. The 
ancients were far wiser in this particular than we. 
Not only their literature and history, but also their 
very houses, as still standing disentombed in Pom- 
peii and Herculaneum, show that their life was one 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 67 

passed out of doors. Their active games, so many, 
so varied, and so exciting ;* their military move- 
ments, in which all engaged, statesmen and scholars 
as well as others ; and all the preparatory training 
which these necessitated and inspired ; their frequent 
bathing ; the vitality and social hilarity of their 
daily activities and experiences ; and the constant 
summons everywhere made upon them for quickness 
and power of action, gave them an arm, and a 
breast, and a pulse of far greater strength than men 
nowadays possess. Such a busy, bustling style of 
life accounts for the high estimate in which they 
held action in oratory : so that Demosthenes once, 
in stating that three things were necessary to oratory, 
declared them emphatically to be " action ! action ! 
action ! ! " And, for the same reason, we do not 
find landscapes among the paintings of the ancients 
as in modern art, but only men, or gods, and their 
agents : not still life, but demonstrations of energy 
in some form ; and so likewise their imaginations 
animated and impersonated every thing around them. 
And yet the bodily development of the ancients 
was but a moiety of what ours might become, from 

* The education of a Greek youth at school consisted of but 
three parts : grammar, music, and gymnastics ; the latter of which 
occupied, up to his sixteonth year, as much time as the other two 
combined, and, from that age up to eighteen, excluded them 
altogether. 



68 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

tlieir utter want of those high, moral, and religious 
stimulations to all the secret springs of health which 
we have, as well as from the positive injurious 
influence upon them, of their frequent and various 
heathenish excesses. 

A wonderful diversity of ends can he gained hy 
special hodily training, in the different directions of 
strength, endurance, agihty or skill, in deeds of 
muscular force, personal hravery, mechanical con- 
trivance, or elaborate workmanship in forms graphic, 
pictorial, surgical, musical, gymnastic, or artistic. 
An absolutely special education, by itself, is not yet 
much in vogue among us, where so many depart- 
ments of successful labor are open, on every side, to 
those who possess a more general style of qualifica- 
tions for honorable toil. 

I. What, then, it is our first question, are the 
ends to be gained, in the body, as a matter of gen- 
eral attainment, applicable to each individual, in the 
course of the higher Christian education ? 

1st. Soundness or health. 

With the fact of health, as with the very word 
itself, what a variety of things is closely connected ! 
Health, heal, hale, whole, and holy are all, etymo- 
logically, derived from one common root. The same 
man, with health, is as different, certainly, from 
what he would or could be without it, as almost 
any two men can be from each other. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 69 

(1.) Health is a duty. It is not indeed wholly, 
but it is surely to a great degree, in our own power, 
and, so far as it is, God holds us responsible, not 
only for its safe keeping, but also for its improve- 
ment. Good health is one of the greatest endow- 
ments that a man can receive at his birth, and one 
of the greatest treasures that he can obtain, at any 
time afterwards, whether by accident or design. 
When every man is taught to feel, that there are 
definite laws of bodily health, and that he wrongs 
himself and his Maker in violating them, as truly as 
in taking up arms against reason and conscience in 
any other direction ; human life and human labor 
will receive, at once, a great enlargement. 

(2.) Health is also a power. Vigor of muscle, 
nerve, and pulse, is a wonderful preparation for 
strong thinking, feeling, and action. Success min- 
isters to health, and health to success ; mutually 
helpful to each other, as thoughts to words and 
words to thoughts, or as effort to attainment and 
attainment to ever new effort. By far the great 
majority of those, who have impressed their ideas 
and plans upon the world, have been men of 
abounding health. 

(3.) Health is a joy. Mere animal health, 
where no power of thought is connected with it, to 
give quickness or sweetness to the flow of daily 
consciousness, is itself a constant source of pleasure. 



70 THE TEUE MEASURE OF THE 

The air, earth, and sea, are each alive with happy 
creatures, gamboling, under the inspirations of 
health, in constant ravishment with their brief lease 
of life. 

(4.) Health is also beauty. Grod hath made 
every thing beautiful in its time. Things inanimate 
abide usually as he has made them, or, if they 
change, change into forms and by processes of his 
direct contrivance. Throughout the whole domain 
of organic life, the same general principles prevail, 
except so far as man, by his abuses or neglects, 
perverts their original constitution or appointed uses 
and relations. He it is, that has turned the world 
upside down, and subjected the same ; so that, 
through him, the whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth in pain together until now. But for man, 
God would now see in looking down upon the work 
of his hands, as at the creation, that " it was all 
very good." Any uninjured animal organism that 
has health, is whole ; and is therefore in the state 
in which Grod made it to be ; and that state is 
beauty. He can make nothing wrong. All his 
works praise him. Wrong means wrung,* twisted, 
out of shape. All his works are done in truth. He 
can make nothing ugly, in reference to the place 

* Compare French word tort (twisted) : the word right (from 
rectus), being the exact opposite, in the form of the figure, ruled or 
straight, to that for wrong, or crooked. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 71 

whicli it is to occupy, or the ends which it is to 
accomplish. All the great intuitions and the in- 
stinctive decisions of his infinite nature would 
interdict it. He is not a God of confusion, but of 
order. He cannot be tempted with evil, in any 
department of his sublime being. Beauty is the 
very brightness of his image, and is therefore dis- 
tributed as universally over all his works, as the 
beams of his presence. 

No cosmetics, no arts of dress, no studied ad- 
justment of light and shade, can adorn the human 
face or form, like health. The perfection of all col- 
ors on earth is flesh -color, which blends them all 
in one, in the mortal face of an immortal ; and the 
perfection of that is seen, only in the rosy tint of 
health. The glory of all forms on earth is the iiu- 
man form, in which the delicacy, dignity, grace, 
might, and majesty of all other animate forms, are 
nicely balanced and harmonized together ; and the 
glory of the human form can be maintained in the 
strength and finish of its members and their func- 
tions, only by the ever-quickening impulses- of 
health. The ancients, for this reason, had far more 
beauty of form than we, and were much more alive 
to its charms. Formosus, excelling in form, is the 
Latin word for beautiful, referring, like the kindred 
word speciosus, making a fine show, and prsestans, 
literally standing up before, to the whole outward 



72 THE TETJE MEASUKE OF THE 

contour of the man. On heatlien ground tlie hu- 
man face never has been, and never can be, that 
thing of beauty, which, in the light of Christianity, 
when all aglow with divine ideas and great heroic 
aims and impulses, it becomes. The heart has no 
such training there, as qualifies it to interpret or 
appreciate or even to receive into itself a demon- 
stration of moral beauty, in either the works of Grod 
or the aspects of men. The very word face (facies 
from facio) implies, indeed, that this it is which 
makes the individual appearance of any one man 
what it really is : as the very making of the face 
itself is also expressed in the word feature (Italian 
fattura, Latin factura) from facio. Here are pre- 
sented the high signals of his own distinct person- 
ality. And yet it is not the grouping of the mere 
lineaments of the human visage, however fine, 
which constitutes its special glory ; but the moral 
expression, breathed into them and filling them 
with its deep, inward illumination. The divine 
light of this higher beauty can be caught and kept 
in the features, only under the power of the cross, 
and from the very reflection upon it of the heart of 
Christ, dying and triumphing while he dies. 

2d. Large positive acquisitions of strength. 

The duties of life are arduous. Health will an- 
swer the demands of a man's own nature upon it- 
self. But there are burdens to be carried, enter- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 73 

prises to be undertaken, and hazards to be encoun- 
tered, by a true man, in behalf of a world whose 
social, civil, governmental, religious, and educa- 
tional ideas and influences are, so many of them, 
false in their aims and mischievous in their results. 
Does an ordinary laborer need much strength, in 
order to vex from the bountiful earth an abundant 
harvest ; or an artisan, to work the metals into new 
forms which are yet so willing to be melted, pound- 
ed, drawn, and tortured at his will ; or a soldier, to 
go successfully through the field of battle, where 
the chances of an hour may, at any moment, dis- 
appoint the highest plans and the greatest efforts ? 
Then, what an estate of bodily vigor must he lay 
by with care, who is to be a fellow-laborer with 
God, in striving to erect everywhere, as each man 
is made and called of him to do, among the desola- 
tions of ruined humanity, as many temples of im- 
mortality as possible to his praise forever ! 

Many shrink back from labors and rewards, 
which greater preparations of strength would enable 
them to assume with gladness. One may some- 
times serve God in the most acceptable of all ways, 
in getting ready to endure hardness, by and by, as 
a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Not only do " they 
serve who wait," but they especially, who prepare 
themselves carefully to serve. 

Positive vigor of nerve and muscle is one of the 



74 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

greatest necessities and duties of good men, at all 
times, and in these days peculiarly, when, to say 
the least, health and strength are rare commodities 
among scholars. An energetic will needs an ener- 
getic body, with which to execute its purposes. 
And, when girding itself to endure, with calmness, 
any of earth's many dark or sorrowful experiences, 
the mind, however heroic in its bearing, needs to 
find in planting its foot firmly for the shock, a sure 
foundation in the amount of its bodily vigor on 
which to stand. In running after the prizes of this 
life, and much more after those of our high calling 
in Christ Jesus, the corruptible crowns of this 
world, or the crown immortal on high, a degree of 
diligence is required, sufficient to cover the greatest 
possible outlay of energy and of time ; and, in 
meeting trials in the service of God, or struggling 
manfully against the changes, disappointments and 
losses of this world, the heavenly-minded and the 
earthly alike need all the aids that they can pro- 
cure, from the highest and best condition of the 
body. 

3d. Grace of mien and manner. 

The bodily powers are capable of very high cul- 
ture, in a wide, comprehensive variety of details, 
which aggregated make a wonderful contrast in the 
result to what would have occurred in their ab- 
sence. Health and strength, in one of true intel- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 75 

lectual and moral elevation and refinement, will al- 
most irresistibly produce grace in his looks, atti- 
tudes, gestures, tones, and motions. As certain 
thoughts, moods, and habits of the mind are ex- 
pressed clearly in the all-revealing features of the 
face ; and so painting can show us, in the well- 
drawn outer man, the inner spirit that possesses 
him : so men, when sitting, standing, walking, 
speaking, and acting, at once disclose in their very 
postures and motions, and in the quality of their 
voices and manners, to the eye of every intelli- 
gent beholder, the hidden history of their ideas of 
themselves and of others, and the style of their im- 
pulses, intentions and tastes. All personal culture 
brings a rich harvest of pleasure to its possessor. 
The finished gentleman, indeed, as he bears about 
with him perpetually the consciousness of his own 
refined sensibilities and gentle feelings and generous 
sentiments and cheerful loving looks, tastes himself, 
all the time, the gratification occasioned to others 
by such characteristics, of which they quaff only 
single draughts at long intervals in his presence. 
And yet the number of those who know any one of 
us, in merely the most incidental and general man- 
ner, and who, therefore, obtain from us only the 
benefit to be gained in the most occasional way, is 
so much the great mass of those who know us at 
all ; and here, for the same reason, lies so much of 



76 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

our whole field of action and influence in this life ; 
that it hecomes every one, who would be either 
manly or godly, to take heed that the multitude 
before whom he moves in so infrequent and momen- 
tary a way, still see in him, at all times, every- 
thing to admire and love, to desire and imitate. 
The leading grace, in the bearing of the outward 
man, is declared by the world at large in the very- 
designation of the word gentleman, to be gentle- 
ness. Gentle and genteel are in origin the same, 
and denote facts quite as much connected with each 
other, as the words used to describe them. No sin- 
gle word could so well epitomize all that belongs 
to real exterior refinement. Gentleness contains 
among its elements, self-possession, self-restraint, 
the power of thought, regard for others, ideas of 
taste and subjective art, and habits of high self- 
culture. Gentleness was one of the hiarhest mani- 
festations that Christ made of his divinity, when on 
earth ; or that God makes perpetually of himself 
in his universal providence. On gentleness as its 
stock, any and every grace, internal and external, 
may be easily grafted ; while without it all other 
personal refinements, of whatever sort, would soon 
become but withered flowers upon a broken stem. 

II. What, now, we ask briefly, are the means 
of gaining these ends described ? 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 77 

1st. Conformity to the laws and conditions, ap- 
pointed for the body as such. 

Not more truly are the planetary worlds under 
the power of exact mathematical law, or the me- 
chanical and chemical forces and elements of nature 
in their action, than the muscular, nervous, circu- 
latory, respiratory, and vital energies, both sever- 
ally and in combination, of the animal organism. 
The hi^er, indeed, the sphere of its applications, 
the more certain and absolute is the reign of law 
throughout the works of God. The conditions of 
bodily welfare pertain, variously, to the subjects of 
light, air, heat, water, diet, clothing, exercise, climate, 
occupation, and all the mental and moral habitudes 
of the mind. Health is the nice and even balance 
of many delicate and subtle elements and agencies, 
at work in every part of the complicated framework 
of our entire being. Some, in seeking to regain 
their health, attach quite too much importance to 
mere muscular exercise, which alone, as many well 
know, will do but little towards the thorough reno- 
vation of the j)hysical system. Here, as in other 
things, " bodily exercise profiteth little ; " lit- 
tle, if not mixed largely with other and better 
things. A wide circle of many influences must be 
concentrated, as in the balancings of the upper 
spheres, on the point desired ; and, above all, within 
the wheels of even animal life must be for its liv- 



78 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

ing spirits, giving tliem all their motion, faith, 
hope, and charity : the only abiding elements of 
power and progress, of health and beauty, in the 
human bosom. Alas ! how little of religion is there 
or even of science, in the mode in which most men 
treat their bodies ! How are its strings, which are 
skilfully attuned to the wants of three-score years 
and ten by its Maker, so broken over all the earth, 
that the average life of the race does not^amount 
to even half that brief term of life ! Those who 
grasp most eagerly after the mere pleasures of the 
body, most abuse it in the act of doing so, and take 
the directest course possible to lose even the petty 
prize for which they seek. Whatever laws God 
hath seen fit to make for us, we must see fit to 
keep. Christianity alone dignifies the body, as it 
makes this fleshy tabernacle the temple of the im- 
mortal soul ; yea, rather of God its Maker. Your 
bodies, saith Paul, are the temples of the Holy 
' Ghost ; and him that defileth the temple of God, 
shall God destroy. 

2d. Thorough mental industry, especially about 
great commanding objects. 

The body, like a flute or viol, is all the more 
improved perpetually, as the music of sweet and 
stirring thoughts is breathed through it. The 
greatest impressions made on the vital forces of the. 
body are made from within, and not from without. 



HIGHEK CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 79 

The currents of life in our veins are chiefly, for the 
fulness and strength of their tide, what the mind 
itself makes them. There is no one law more fully 
enthroned in all the inner chambers of the soul, in 
respect to its own conscious pleasure, or the great- 
ness of the results of its action to others, than that 
of the necessity of constant, earnest employment. 
Not more truly must one lay out all his powers to 
climb a lofty precipice, than we must toil with con- 
tinual though delighted energy, to make any just 
approaches to that sphere of neighborhood to God 
in our aims and efforts, for which we were made. 
For such a life of ever renewed lofty labor our minds 
were constituted ; as was the body to sustain and 
serve just such natures, in their highest courses of 
action. Thorough, successful mental labor ; and 
to be successful it must be thorough and unremit- 
ted : is one of the greatest of all stimulants to 
health, and of all safeguards of it. The higher the 
object of pursuit, and the more perpetual the felt 
inspiration of its claims, the deeper and riclier will 
be the satisfaction of strong and steady toil to ob- 
tain it. The face of a vigorously industrious man 
has a light in it, that other faces have not. A 
man's wisdom, saitli Solomon, maketh his face to 
shine ; and the impudence of his countenance is 
taken away. His step has a force and quickness in 
it, his form an erectness, and his whole bearing an 



80 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

air that publishes to every one the arrival of a true 
man, wherever he goes. 

3, Habitual cheerfulness. 

There is everything in God and nature, and in 
the work of life and its results, to fill the heart with 
joy in running its earthly career. We are capable, 
also, of possessing such a style and assemblage of 
Christian graces ; and there are so many induce- 
ments, invitations, summons and helps to us to ob- 
tain and exercise them ; that it is wholly our own 
fault, if a single drop of bitterness remains in the 
cup of sweets, which our Father in heaven presents 
to us here below. Whose heart was not made to 
be, and therefore cannot and ought not at all 
times to be, full of gratitude, love, faith, hope, zeal, 
and holy peace ? Such exercises ever spreading 
their light and heat over the soul, and through the 
soul over the various functions of the body, will 
stimulate all their energies into a full growth. 
Earnest self-improvement, constant happy service 
unto others and full devotion to God : what will not 
these do, when combined, to quicken and strengthen 
the innermost elements of life in the organism of 
the body ? 

But careful, full conformity to the physical laws 
of our being, thorough mental industry and habitual 
cheerfulness, are not surely haphazard qualities, of 
which a youth can become possessed, he knows not 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 81 

how. His guides to manly greatness must zealously 
lead him to seek and to obtain these permanent re- 
sources of health, honor, and happiness. 

Secondly. In reference to the intellect. 

It is in this part of our nature, that we differ 
most from the other orders of beings around us. 
Here is the throne of our manhood. The very word 
man, coming from the same root as the Latin mens, 
mind ; memini and reminiscor, to remember ; moneo, 
to admonish ; and Minerva, the goddess of wisdom ; 
and as also the Greek /j,ivo<;, courage ; fir)vL<i, wrath, 
fivdofiai-, to remember ; and firjvveiv, to reveal ;* as 
well as the German mann and mensch, a man ; and 
meinen, to guess or intend ; means a thinker : so 
that he belies his very designation as a man, who 
neglects to use and improve his mind, as the very 
crown and summit of his whole being. 

What now is the complement of things to be 
gained, in this part of our nature, by a true, full 
education ? 

I. Intelligence. 

"Wonderful, indeed, are the mind's powers of 
receptivity : opening outwards to all parts of the 

* Compare also fi.aivofj.ai, fiavris and fxavr^vw and German minne, 

love ; the Danish minne, remembrance ; and the Slavonic minyeti, 

to mean. 

4* 



82 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

■universe, and capable of taking them all in and ex- 
panding also in its dimensions, at each new outlay 
of its strength. The uses and pleasures of knowl- 
edge are the very highest of our being. The kinds 
of knowledge that must be gained, in a course en- 
titled to be called that of the higher education, are 
various. 

1st. Acquaintance with man. 

Into what a proverb of universally acknowledg- 
ed authority has that pithy saying of Pope's passed, 
" The proper study of mankind is man." It cer- 
tainly is one of our proper studies. In ourselves, 
individually, as in a synopsis or diagram, we are to 
find all the elements of our science of man ; since 
in each of us are the contents of our whole race. It 
is always he, who best paints, sings, or preaches his 
own thoughts and feelings as they are, that most 
evokes the sympathy and admiration of all around 
him. The chord of mutual fellowship is, at once, 
struck deeply in their hearts. The different kinds 
of acquaintance with man to be gained are such, as^ 

(1.) The knowledge of human nature. 

Our whole life is, from first to last, one of con- 
stant relations to others. The social harmonies of 
our being are the highest part of its frame-work. 
But how can we gain from others, or give to them 
what we should, without an adequate comprehen- 
sion of their most facile points of connection with 



HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION. 83 

US. An analysis of the elements of the highest in- 
fluence over others, whether insensible or direct, 
and whether in the mere forms of ordinary inter- 
course or in high governmental relations of any 
kind, will always detect these two as chief : Tight- 
ness of principle or thorough reason, system and 
science in the positions assumed, and kindness in 
one's feelings and manner in taking them. All who 
excel in generalship, statesmanship, education, or 
parental duty, do so by holding these two elements 
in full combination in their work. Kindness means 
treating others, as belonging to the same kind. 
This is the origin of the word ; as of humane from 
human, and of generous from genus : all indicating 
a disposition in full acquaintance and sympathy 
with the race at large. But what room is there, in 
employing the elements of power over others al- 
ready mentioned, for ever-varying additions of pa- 
tience, tact, skill, plan and prayer in the mode of 
reaching the desired result, both by w^ay of not 
evoking any passions, prejudices, or suspicions 
against us^ and also by way of introducing the in- 
fluence which we wish to exert in the most insinu- 
ating and winning manner. The knowledge of 
human nature can be best communicated to another, 
by the constant exhibition of its practical use. Op- 
portunities of incidental instruction, also, in its 
elements occur perpetually in teaching the philoso- 



84 THE TRUE MEASUEE OF THE 

phy of history, and in traversing the rich and ever 
varying field of study in the classical authors. 
And if there is one spot of all the earth that fur- 
nishes, beyond any other, incessant occasions for 
discovering and watching the developments of 
human nature, it is the school room ; and here too 
if anywhere, a skilful acquaintance with its prin- 
ciples is in ever new demand, at all times. 

(2.) The knowledge of human history. 

By knowing what man has been, during the 
ages that have gone, under every variety of climate, 
education, religion and social development, we are 
best prepared to learn what he is in himself, with- 
out reference to any outward conditions. It is man 
that gives to every mountain, river, sea, ocean, or 
continent, all its value, as these are but his sur- 
roundings, and contrived to be as they are, only to 
make his nature all the more super-eminent. 

The study of history is one of the most liberal- 
izing of all studies. It gratifies the curiosity : it 
furnishes endless food for thought ; and it multi- 
plies our own experience for breadth and value by 
as many fold, as the area of our observation is ex- 
tended outwardly from ourselves. All human 
character and conduct, fate and fortune, are covered 
up within its ample folds. The older the thinker 
or writer, the larger his stores of thought and the 
wider the scope of his powers, the higher always is 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 85 

the estimate, that lie sets upon the value of histori- 
cal knowledge. 

History must be studied philosophically, and its 
lessons conned over and over again, or its rich har- 
vests of truths will be only looked at, but not reaped 
by the student. The true history of a nation is its 
inner, not its outer history : the history of its 
courses of thought, purpose and achievement. Its 
external show of bustle, pomp and pride may please 
children, who like noise and glitter, but not a real 
man, who looks beneath .the surface after the hid- 
den springs of all that at any time appears upon it. 
The track of historical investigation that every 
truly educated man should traverse with care, be- 
side that passing through the dimmer regions of 
antiquity, in Egypt, Phoenicia, Judea, and western 
Asia : beginning with Greece, where the historic 
muse first combined exactness and fulness of record, 
with high elevation of style, passing through Rome 
and the Middle Ages and modern Europe, as such, 
branches off into separate lines of special interest, 
through Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Spain, 
England and America ; with all of which countries 
the developments of modern progress are greatly 
connected. It is singular, indeed, that our scholars 
are so generally contented, to be ignorant of the his- 
tory of Germany and of Holland ; to which two 
countries we are more indebted than to all others of 



86 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

the present day, except England, To Germany we 
owe, to a high degree, our Mood and language and 
reformed faith and scholarship ; and, like England, 
Germany deserves from modern society at large, for 
its intellectual explorations and discoveries, for its 
many practical inventions, and for its general spirit 
of progress, the highest possible appreciation and 
gratitude. 

History should be taught so as to hold up the 
facts and principles of our natures, as men, in a 
clear magnified form before the eye ; to show in 
general the onward movement of Humanity from 
age to age, as well as the particular steps of its 
progress ; to interpret the slowly unfolding scroll of 
Divine Providence ; and to make indeed the whole 
gorgeous past move as a vast connected drama, 
with its different acts and scenes, from one fixed be- 
ginning in man, to an equally fixed issue in God, 
of whom and for whom are all things on earth and 
in Heaven. 

(3.) The knowledge of human language and 
literature. 

Language is, for all its uses, the chief of earthly 
studies. It is in itself alone, as a piece of mechan- 
ism, of the deepest interest ; and with such endless 
connections does each language run into and out 
of others, before, around and behind it, that no one 
can be studied with any adequacy by itself alone. 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 87 

• 

Language is our first intellectual want ; and there 
is nothing next after our limbs, that, to the end of 
life, we use so much. There is no such other mode 
in which we are always doing good or harm. Life 
and death are in the power of the tongue ; and 
therefore by our words we shall be justified, and by 
our words we shall be condemned. 

There is no intellectual discipline at all equal to 
the study of language, for variety and force of stimu- 
lation to every faculty. No one is really educated 
who has not made it a study ; and no attention to 
it can be called a study which is not analytic and 
philosophical, and which does not centre in the 
classical languages, as its great fountain of interest 
Variety and fulness of linguistic culture are specially 
demanded, in the American system of education, 
beyond any thing yet generally conceived. All those 
languages should be embraced in our system of edu- 
cation, with which as such our own language is 
most fully connected ; and whose history and lit- 
erature have attained to any large growth and 
maturity. 

The whole system of female education in this 
country is, in this respect, radically deficient in its 
style. Its foundation is mathematics, and should 
be language. Woman has special endowments and 
qualifications for success in the mastery of language ; 
and, next to the power of her character and dispo- 



88 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

• 

sition if lovely and refined, there is no instrument 
of sucli great and constant potency within her grasp, 
as skill in the use of language. Elegance in con- 
versation, and the skilful use of the pen in corre- 
spondence and composition, are intellectual orna- 
ments, which every cultivated lady should obtain 
and keep with diligence. Many a woman, capable 
of exalted usefulness and happiness, now walks 
through her earthly history with little strength or 
zeal or joy, unconscious of her own real undeveloped 
nobility of mind ; because untrained to the clear, 
definite, earnest expression of thought, and to any 
high sensibility to the charms of beautiful language. 
The so-called female college or university, that 
shall revolutionize the present basis and mode of 
conducting female education, and mark out for its 
pupils a thorough, persistent course of wide and 
high study in the languages, ancient and modern, 
will do a work for the age and the female sex and 
the world, for which the centuries have been long- 
waiting. 

Philology has recently, by a wondrous series of 
explorations, brought to light a wide array of most 
curious and valuable facts, concerning the different 
languages of the world, whether viewed singly or in 
combination. There is no more inviting field of re- 
search now open before an earnest, deep-searching 
mind. Here is a land abounding in mines of gold 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 89 

and precious stones. Labor is sure of its reward, 
and glittering prizes on every side await discovery. 
There is a true high Christian method of teach- 
ing the classics, worthy of the name. In the ele- 
gant contributions of ancient authors to the poetry, 
history, literature and philosophy of the world, we 
see as in a mirror, the social ideas and habits and 
manners of their times ; and in what grand delight- 
ful contrast to the wants and woes of heathen civili- 
zation, in its most refined form, do the laws and 
institutions, the customs and comforts, of modern 
Christendom reveal themselves to view. Perpetual 
opportunity is here furnished for tracing the direc- 
tions, degrees and processes of human advancement. 
And how can the wants of our moral nature be 
exhibited, and the need of special divine revelation 
for the right shaping of our opinions and our lives, 
when wandering amid such a vast collection of in- 
tellectual and spiritual ruins ! In contrast also 
with that corrupt mythology, amid the sensual im- 
agery of which so many love to tarry, as if pure 
poetic idealism and moral impurity could, by any 
possibility, be truly and beautifully joined together, 
how does the innate loveliness of Bible-truth ap- 
pear : as the prophet of the old covenant, and the 
apostle of the new, make the pontiff and the augur 
of heathen Kome appear side by side with them, 
like savages, standing rough and grim in the pres- 



90 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

ence of men, whose faces are illuminated with, sub- 
lime thought and sweet benevolent feeling. 

Literature and its history also furnish a large 
and fruitful field of study and instruction. Here 
language is employed, not as in the daily inter- 
course of life, for present uses, but as the guardian 
of the precious treasures of thought and experience, 
laid by in the past for the benefit of all succeeding 
ages. Here are to be found, alike, the selectest 
monuments of human genius, and the most endur- 
ing memorials of human toil. 

The historic literature of the world hangs 
together, in a connected chain of sequences, from 
first to last. Modern literature is but the broader 
and fuller eflSorescence of the higher growths of 
thought, that have appeared on the summits of 
each preceding age. This age is what it is, and 
English literature has become what it is, because 
Greece and Kome, and Italy, Germany, France, 
Spain and Holland, from whom in various degrees 
it has derived its substance, form and features, 
were each respectively what they were. There is 
no one body of literature of such majestic propor- 
tions, and of so many beautiful and divine aspects, 
as our own ; and this, according not only to our 
own view which might be unconsciously perverted, 
but that also of the great men of other nations, as 
loudly proclaimed in many directions. Our own 



HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION. 91 

Kterature, I have said ; for we are richer in litera- 
ture than even England herself, as we own all hers 
and ours also. It is a great defect in our common 
style of personal self-improvement, as well as of our 
system of jDublic instruction, that so little account 
is had, or rather in most cases no account at all is 
had, of the vast continent of literature to he found 
in our language : excelling in breadth and variety 
and the luxuriance of its growths, all the literature 
of the world, present and past beside. Surely here 
again, " the prophet is without honor in his own 
country." There ought to be, in all our Colleges, a 
professorship of English literature, whose function 
it should be to unfold its history, in rich living 
discourse, with ample sketches of the leading 
literary men of England and America, accompanied 
with a broad and generous spirit of criticism upon 
the substance and style of the great works in our 
language : a professorship, the text-book for whose 
recitations should be Shakspeare ; which ought to 
be for its own worth and the value of its influence 
in training our young men to the highest style of 
native growth, a classic held in the greatest honor, 
by those of Trans-Atlantic and Cis-Atlantic English 
blood alike. In connection with our own literature, 
the man of any thing like full education will ac- 
quaint himself with Grecian^ and Roman literature 
also, without a thorough knowledge of which, indeed, 



92 THE TEUE MEASURE OF THE 

lie cannot understand or appreciate our own ; as 
well as witli German and Frencli belles-lettres, 
especially German, so full of all vital energies of 
thought and feeling, ^sthetical culture brings 
great rewards to its possessor, both in respect to his 
high personal enjoyment and in respect to his in- 
fluence, as a thinker and writer over others. No 
eye can gaze unmoved upon structures of beauty in 
the world of thought, or see them rise as if by magic 
like fairy castles, under hands skilful in rearing 
them, without admiration. 

To this department of study, criticism and 
rhetoric belong, the two chief forms of literary art ; 
which are of the highest value when supplemental 
to previous courses of thorough mental discipline, 
but are never to be, as they sometimes have been, 
substituted for them. As well might one think of 
filling the parts of a huge edifice which should be 
occupied by solid masonry, with the light ornamen- 
tal work that belongs only to its finishings. 

(4.) The knowledge of human wants. 

The true object of education is, to acquire the 
power and the disposition to do good to the highest 
possible degree. As the will is made sovereign in 
the constitution of the mind itself, so the moral is 
the crowning glory of all the powers and faculties 
of our entire manhood. It is the law prevailing 
throughout the whole universe of minds, that he 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 93 

wlio has obtained treasures of any kind must share 
tliem witli others ; or be made miserable by with- 
holding them. It is as logically and practically 
necessary for a man to know the actual state of the 
world in which and for which he is fitting himself 
to act ; and whose demands upon his thoughts and 
labors he is to meet rightly, or his life will be a fail- 
ure : as for one who is constructing a steam en- 
gine or a telescope, to understand well the prin- 
ciples to be followed, and the ends to be gained by 
his mechanism, when completed. Many make in 
education the same mistake that others do in re- 
ligion : in treating it as if having a distinct exist- 
ence by itself, separate from its relations. But all 
things are for their uses ; and all the wonders and 
beauties of their being are found in their many and 
marvellous adaptations to those uses ; and so among 
the whole army of intelligent beings, he that 
would be the greatest of all must J3e the servant of 
all. To do good as we have opportunity : this is 
the law that is not only appointed of God, but 
reigns self-ordained also over every being that pos- 
sesses reason and conscience. So many have lack- 
lustre eyes in their studies, because they have no 
great controlling object of thought and interest in 
view. The mind is made to lay out its force upon 
the objective world, as upon it also that outer world 
is made to pour perpetually all its myriad influences. 



94 THE TEUE MEASUKE OF THE 

Eacli is made for the other ; and as in the partner- 
ship of kindred hearts in life it is not good for 
either to be alone. The reason why so many fail in 
the various professions : as indeed well nigh the 
great majority do : is because they make a wrong 
selection for themselves ; and this, because their 
ulterior aims are such as to pervert their judgment 
and their action. 

Another of the general forms of intelligence to 
be gained in the higher education, is, 

2d. Acquaintance with science. 

All sciences and all branches of knowledge have 
been interwoven with each other into a beauteous 
garment of praise to their great Author ; which 
like a royal robe of many colors he has dropped, as 
if with purposed carelessness, among his earthly 
children, that they might in disentangling its 
materials learn to know him in the greatness of his 
power and the goodness of his love. 

The sciences, so-called, are the exact sciences, 
(or the mathematics,) the natural sciences, and 
mental, moral, legal and political science, or the 
science of political economy. Some knowledge of 
the mathematics is absolutely necessary to the 
most ordinary transactions of business. The utili- 
ties of mixed mathematics, from simple arithmetic 
up to any and all of the applications of trigonome- 
try and conic sections, are obvious as a matter of 



HIGHEE CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 95 

practical profit to those who employ them. But 
pure mathematics, from algebra through all parts 
of the calculus, have in them a higher value still to 
the mind itself, in the inward wrestling to which 
they summon it with difficulties, in that invisible, 
wondrous thought-land, where an intellect of bold, 
strong tread most loves to wander. The higher 
walks and visions and exhilarations of mathemat- 
ical science, must of course be reserved for that 
little circle of minds, which are so charmed with its 
abstractions, as to leave every thing else neglected 
by the wayside in order to seek after them. Great 
absorption in this one field of investigation, as in- 
deed in any other, can be had only at the sacrifice 
of inquiry and progress somewhere else. For the 
general purposes of education, the mathematics do 
not compare at all in power of drill, and variety of 
mental exercise, and so of consequent mental 
growth, with the classics. 

As to the natural sciences : they are all, more 
or less, and generally in the most intimate manner 
connected with the mathematics, according to 
whose principles the inward elements of matter are 
mixed together, and its outward forms are con- 
structed. No education can be complete, which 
passes by the laws and forces of nature : as with 
them every man is connected, in some way, at every 
moment. He acts on them, and through them at 



96 THE TEUE MEASURE OF THE 

all times. By new combinations of some of their 
most subtle agencies, or new uses of old combina- , 
tions, some of the highest points of progress in our 
age have been reached. And certainly that science, 
which concerns itself specifically with the human or- 
ganism, and with the vital elements of its health 
and growth and force, claims with more imperative- 
ness than any other the earnest attention of every 
educated man. 

Many of the natural sciences are of very recent 
discovery, as geology, chemistry and physiology ; 
and yet these are among the sciences that are now 
most influential upon human thought and progress. 
Greology has given eyes to men which can penetrate 
the surface of the earth, and read the mystic con- 
tents of its dark bosom ; so that, like Le Verrier 
before the observer pointed the instrument toward 
the new star that he could himself announce but 
could not see, the geologist ere the laborer lifts his 
spade can point with a sure finger to the mines of 
coal, or iron, or gold, that lie deep out of sight be- 
neath. Chemistry, also, has broken the seals that 
before held the secret essences of things together ; 
and taught us how to loose or bind, at our will, the 
hidden ties of their connection. The very lightning, 
the most untamable in itself of all God's ministers 
among the winds and flaming fire, has been made 
to come and go at our bidding, on errands great and 



HIGHEE CHEISTIAN EDUCATION. 97 

small, and to quietly spell out our various human 
alphabets : sounding distinctly every letter across 
seas and continents in the hearing of all nations. 
From the science of physiology, what leaves of heal- 
ing, as from the Tree of Life, have been scattered 
over all this generation ! It has given additional 
honor to the body and to our life in it, and poured 
streams of gladness into all the fountains of our 
earthly experience. Many of the natural sciences, 
also, have made such great advancement during the 
last century, as though possessing the same name 
to have yet become themselves quite new sciences ; 
as natural philosophy, in all its departments, espe- 
cially in electricity and galvanism ; astronomy, in 
its improved instruments and discoveries ; miner- 
alogy and botany, which have been wondrously en- 
larged in their contents and beautified in their 
arrangements. The pursuit of the natural sciences, 
beside the general advantage which it furnishes of 
enlarging the boundaries of knowledge, and multi- 
plying greatly the topics of thought, and the 
materials for analogical reasoning and illustration, 
has also a high value as a special variation of the 
best mode of mental discipline : furnishing, in con- 
nection with all the other elements of educational 
improvement for the young, a wide and diversified 
range of appeals and stimulations and rewards to 
the spirit of study. But, adopted as the sole path 



9b THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

of intellectual development, as if having any suffi- 
ciency in itself to compass all the ends to be gained, 
it realizes but a very partial benefit to the student : 
giving him large infQj-mation and pleasure, but rob- 
bing him of all those higher growths of strength and 
beauty of mind, which can be acquired only by the 
wide, philosophical and artistic study of language. 
Here is the great defect of the French university 
system, which not only rests on the mathematics and 
natural sciences as its base, but confines almost its 
whole amplitude within them. The German sys- 
tem which lays its foundations in linguistic culture, 
is right in its great fundamental idea, but inade- 
quate in the structure which it rears upon them. 
Their whole education, as such, is linguistic educa- 
tion. In France, science, and in Germany, lan- 
guage, is pursued as an end and not as a means 
except for the mere purposes of a livelihood. The 
end sought is the pleasures of intellectual conquest, 
or the rewards of honor ; while in every case the 
only objects to be aimed at in an education are, on 
the one hand, to develop in full perfection the secret 
germinal forces and elements of the mind, as such, 
and on the other to prepare each individual to pur- 
sue through life the most high and manly course 
possible, of purposed toil for God and his fellow- 
men. Neither the French nor German system have 
the impress of humanity and Christianity upon 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 99 

them. Utility is not the law of their being. In 
the English, and particularly the American system, 
when enlarged and perfected in all its details esj)e- 
cially in the department of language, is the truest 
model yet conceived of what the people that are to 
be will ere long erect as their standard of general 
education in all countries and ages. 

The natural sciences ought to be taught, so as 
always to show the great architect of Heaven and 
Earth, manifestly revealed in His works. Those 
works are everywhere full of mechanical principles 
and adaptations, and press in many varied forms 
perpetually the argument of design upon our 
hearts ; one of whose first and deepest intuitions it 
is, that design eveiywhere presupposes, by neces- 
sity, a designer. In the adaptations of anatomy, 
one to the other, and the wonderful conformation 
of man's structure in all parts of his nature to the 
elements and resources of the surrounding universe, 
from which he is to draw his experience, and on 
which and through which he is to work his will : 
himself, though so smaU, yet the actual counterpart 
of all that is without him and around him ; how 
plainly do we see the skilful loving mighty handi- 
work of God ! And, in the minute mathematical 
and dynamical proportions and analytical discrimi- 
nations of chemistry, as well as in all the vast, and 
yet well-defined records of geology, what secret, 



100 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

and at the same time what intelligible and unmis- 
takable proofs of God's presence, amid the forces 
and essences of nature, to guide them to His own 
high ends and to man's uses for His kingdom and 
glory ! Since the assent of the mind is so instant 
and instinctive to the necessary connection between 
every contrivance and its contriver, that no two 
things can be jointed or framed together, however 
rudely, without creating the feeling, as infallibly as 
if a matter of vision itself, that it is the work of 
some designing human hand ; it is wonderful, that 
such a pile of multitudinous appeals should be set 
up everywhere before the human mind by God, to 
this so instinctive quick and necessary conviction. 
Geology of all the sciences is foremost in neces- 
sitating the admission on the part of all who know 
its facts, that every thing now living upon earth has 
had a recent beginning, and so a recent origination 
in the will of some great Contriving Hand. Ani- 
mal Physiology too shows, in each animal structure 
as in every other one of the same species, and in 
the last as precisely and wonderfully as in the first 
one of the kind, the same numerous inward special- 
ties and harmonies of plan and correlation : part 
with part and each part with the whole. Here 
God, the great benevolent Creator of man, shows 
Himself as plainly to the eye of Reason as well as 
of Faith, as when first entering upon the execution 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, 101 

of His great world-plan. Here therefore science 
should show Him and His footsteps to the view. 

Mental science, or the science of the human 
mind, bears in its very designation its title to the 
first rank of human studies. With logic, the science 
of reasoning, it forms one of the best of all modes 
of strengthening the intellectual faculties, when in 
their higher stages of power and progress. In meta- 
physical studies, indeed, the loftiest minds in all 
ages have delighted to dwell, like eagles in their 
mountain homes. The greatest forces that have 
moved the world in any age have been metaphysi- 
cal. To a mind at all addicted to coasting around 
the shore of things invisible, and hovering about its 
secret wonders, to one that knows the mystic speU 
of abstract thought, there is a pleasure, a rapture 
rather, in philosophic speculation, which is to be 
found outside of the realm of holy work and worship, 
nowhere else. 

Moral science, or ethics, must have also its 
proper place in the course of the higher education. 
This is the science of human duty. It determines 
the sphere of right and wrong for both individuals 
and communities, in all the relations of life. Its 
facts and principles are much more plain, than those 
of metaphysics ; and the profit of the study is, 
rather, distinctively moral than intellectual. 

Legal science pertains to the whole scope and 



102 THE TKUE MEASURE OF THE 

sphere of human laws, whether founded in natural 
equity, common custom, or positive statute. Here 
is the realm of nice distinctions and close definitions, 
and of strong argumentation, welded and clamped 
and riveted together. Both as a matter of mental 
discipline and of personal information, the study of 
the general principles of law, that is, of its great 
elementary facts and features as a science, is, if not 
as a matter of absolute necessity yet as one of very 
great value, worthy to be embraced in the specific 
course which deserves to be called that of the higher 
education. 

The science of political economy, although of but 
recent establishment, is one of the noblest of the in- 
ductive sciences. Its deductions are large indeed, 
having applications as wide, not only as the bound- 
aries of national development and prosperity, but 
also as those of humanity itself, in all the mutual 
bearings of international exchanges, and the social 
stimulations and advantages of general commercial 
intercourse. In a country, where each man directly 
decides who shall rule its interests and according 
to what policy ; and where, at any moment, he may 
be elevated himself by popular sufirage to offices 
of trust and service of the highest kind, the science 
of political economy, at once so profound, engaging 
and profitable, should be of course included in a 



HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION. 103 

high and true style of preparation for the duties of 
life. 

From the rapid survey now taken of the sphere 
of knowledge to be possessed by the true scholar, 
how obvious is it that the prevailing ideas on the 
subject of academic, collegiate and professional edu- 
cation alike, are altogether too narrow ! The time 
is coming because it is needful that it should, when 
the lad of ordinary endowments and attainments, at 
twelve, shall be led for six short, not long, succes- 
sive years through a preparatory course of earnest, 
vigorous, ever-triumphant study : in the classics, 
through all the vast variety of rich, delightful fields 
of investigation that they open in ground forms, 
syntax, prosody, etymology, grammatical and lexi- 
cal, both special and comparative, antiquities, geog- 
raphy, biography and history : in the mathemat- 
ics, up to the broad and glowing plane of its higher 
elements and formulas : in geography and history, 
ancient and modern, over all their wide enchanting 
fields of interest ; and in the ancient and modern 
languages, especially the French and German, to 
the point of a full and facile possession, not only of 
the languages themselves, but also of much of their 
best literature. With such an outfit secured, and 
made permanent by the most accurate and energetic 
drill throughout, especially in grammar in all its 
full scientific elements and relations : with the 



104 THE TEUE MEASURE OF THE 

superadded advantage of a complete compreliension 
and appreciation of the facts of physiology, so as to 
know and to keep the rules of health : the young 
academician of a future day will be ready to enter 
upon the more advanced stage of university-educa- 
tion, which will then be opened before him. Into 
that higher form, our ]3 resent, low, collegiate style 
of education must ere long be raised. Through six, 
instead of four years, the eager student well ac- 
coutred for his work, fond of intellectual labor and 
panting to conquer new difficulties, should be led 
in this part of his course also : beginning for his 
first year with those studies which are now assigned 
to the second or third year of the college course, 
and mounting up along a path of much more com- 
plete daily toil than is now assigned for him, year 
after year, into one region after another of the high- 
est and broadest, most analytic and philosophic 
study, in the departments of language, science, 
criticism and art, throughout the whole range of 
the ancient classics and of the modern, especially 
the English and German. With three years more 
of strict professional study, studying both the science 
and the history of it ; deeply and gladly involved in 
the precious toil of original composition, and in in- 
spiring converse, all the time, with the elect minds 
of all ages bending in holy silence from the thrones 
of their written thoughts to greet him : what a prep- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 105 

aration for entering on the work of making thought 
for others, and guiding their actions to great issues, 
would such an one have ! What young giants at 
twenty-seven woukl then be found among us, in- 
stead of the pigmies at fifty, not a few of them 
covered with titles to conceal their nakedness, which 
are now quite too abundant over all the land. 

Another of the higher kinds of intelligence to be 
gained is, 

3d. Acquaintance with nature. 

Nature is the home of beauty ; for it is God's 
pavilion among the sons of men. Here, as Adam 
heard the voice of the Lord God walking among the 
trees of the garden, the man of true thought and 
feeling meets everywhere, and almost in open vision, 
the great, good Father of lights who seems to be, 
as he is, everywhere waiting to be gracious unto 
him. Here is perpetual refreshment for the eye 
and the heart. Many have indeed managed the 
sublime work of education in a way that divorced 
the victims of their perverted ideas from nature, 
and art and man and God, and left them in an in- 
tensely isolated state, at the best, of mere elegant 
good-for-nothingness ; but a true education ends in 
the marriage of the soul to every thing great and 
good and true in the universe. As poets delight to 
gather garlands of flowers from the fields, and hang 

them around the necks of. the muses : as kings 
5* 



-</ 



106 THE TKUE MEASURE OF THE 

lavishly adorn their walls within, for their own eyes, 
with pictures of the beauty that is without, on 
which every one can gaze nor ask permission : as 
divine revelation comes clothed to us in a garb of 
many colors, taken from heaven and earth ; so, of 
all places in the world, the silent, meditative walks 
of the student should be carefully festooned with 
beauty ; and his cloistered chamber should be fra- 
grant with the scent of Eden. As Truth is his at- 
tending Grenius in the world of thought, so should 
Beauty be in that of sight. What vivid illustra- 
tions can one who loves nature himself, draw to his 
work as a teacher ; and with what perpetual relish 
and profit by his pupils, as did the divine Saviour, 
who so loved the mountains and the sea, in his 
instructions to his disciples ! Their imagination 
craves such food : it belongs to them ; and he who 
negligently or unconsciously withholds it from them, 
robs them of something far more precious than food 
or raiment. 

A youth should be taught both at home and in 
school ; and for this reason, life in the country is so 
much better than in the city ; to observe the ever- 
changing forms and scenes of nature, around and 
above him. Fine landscapes, sunrises and sunsets, 
the ever-varying clouds, majestic storms with their 
thunder -trumpets, the moon and stars by night, 
mountain heights, dells, and gorges and deep caves, 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 107 

the solemn hush of the forest, and its more solemn 
moan, the calm hour of twilight, the noise of water- 
falls, the laughing stream, the placid lake, the surg- 
ing sea, the universal chorus of birds, as the gates 
of day open at dawn and shut at eve upon us, and 
all nature full, in high keys and low, of the voices 
of happy creatures summering away their lives in 
gladness : what endless food do these all furnish for 
the inspiration of thought and feeling ! 

Beauty of form or outline is to be seen and stud- 
ied in nature, as also beauty of color or of light and 
shade ; and not alone these mere external aspects, 
but also the inward order of mechanism, and the 
designs of love that they reveal, and of which the 
glittering or elegant exterior is but the fitting en- 
closure. 

It is surely one of the most surprising proofs of 
man's inward blindness, that nature, the very book 
whose letters are largest, and which God holds most 
closely before the eyes of men, and the only one con- 
taining the lessons of His wisdom and love, which is 
ever opened to the mass of mankind, is still the very 
one, in which the great majority of the race read not 
a lesson, and see not even a single letter. 

Let no student feel, wherever he is, that he is 
denied a high and true intercourse with nature. 
There are walks for meditation, and heights for 
prospect even in the crowded city, where swarms 



108 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

cover every open space, and wliere all original va- 
riations of surface are carefully evened ; and the 
scenery of the sky is there, and of the sea or of 
some mighty stream hastening towards it ; whose 
bosom is ever heaving with the burdens of com- 
merce, and within whose arms its sails, like doves 
whispering to each other, gather themselves toge- 
ther. And in the want of all material stimulations 
to poetic sensibility, there are yet books full of 
thought-pictures of the selectest beauty, which in- 
deed have been nearly always drawn with the most 
effect by those, who amid the cares of city life have 
pined for the remembrances of a youth spent under 
more open skies, and on broader fields, and under 
the shadow of the everlasting hills. 

Another of the higher forms of intelligence to 
be gained, is, 

4th. Acnuaintancs with art. 

Among the elements of the higher education, 
should be instruction in the principles of art. By 
art is meant in the abstract the theory, and in the 
concrete the faculty, of rightly executing, or ex- 
pressing, the more tender, beautiful, or sublime 
conceptions of the human mind. Art is therefore 
the revealer of the best moods of humanity on the 
one hand, and of the highest capacities on the oth- 
er, of the objects on which the artist works, to re- 
ceive and to keep the image of himself and of his 



HIGHER CHBISTIAN EDUCATION. 109 

thoughts, that he would stamp upon them. Art 
has its great generalizations and its grand ideals, 
and may he taught and studied in the sphere of its 
general relations and uses, without centralizing 
one's thoughts on any one specific department of it. 
The careful study of Keynolds and Kuskin, than 
whom no modern writer displays more power and 
heauty of thought, will open the eye to see and the 
heart to feel, through what a world of wonders our 
path of daily life, however common, passes. In 
what heathenish neglect is the art-side of our na- 
tures left by almost every one, who assumes or ven- 
tures upon the holy work of educating them, 
whether at home or at school ! Man has indeed an 
organism of susceptibilities and capacities, vaster 
than it has entered into the hearts of most men to 
conceive ; and the work of leading him up to glory 
and to Grod is the grandest work, for height and 
breadth, in which the efforts of any one can be em- 
ployed. 

But there is a still higher form yet of intelli- 
gence to be gained : higher in itself, 5,nd higher in 
its results. 

5th. Acquaintance with the word and character 
and plans of God. 

The grand fact of the universe absorbing all 
others in its vast dimensions, is this : God is. Any 
and all finite creatures, however numerous or mighty, 



110 THE TRUE MEASUEE OF THE 

and all their affairs are but mere motes appearing 
in the universal blaze of his being, and made "visi- 
ble by it. Every thing pertaining to him, or his 
ways, is immediately aggrandized by the connec- 
tion. The Bible, as his word, is rightly denominat- 
ed in its very title, The Book. No other on earth 
has such heights in it to climb, none such depths to 
sound. No book has such power in it to educate 
the intellect for force of logic, beauty of concep- 
tion, breadth of view, tone of feeling or sweep of 
thought ; for it is God's book. It is the great enig- 
ma of our educational system, devised as it has 
been by Christian men, that this sacred volume not 
only does not occupy a cons23icuous central place in 
it, but not even for educational purposes any place 
at all. The Mohammedan bases his whole system 
of full long school-instruction on the Koran, the 
Hindu upon the Vedas, and the Papist on the in- 
terpretations and traditions and perversions of the 
fathers ; but we who alone have the glorious word 
of the great God of heaven and earth, instead of 
bearing it with joy and triumph into the recitation- 
and lecture-rooms of our high, schools and universi- 
ties, keep it well bound and gilded as a cabinet cu- 
riosity in our houses or our hearts. But the Bible 
is yet to have free course and to be glorified, in our 
colleges and academies, as in all the world beside. 
Its history and literature should be studied and 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. Ill 

made familiar, by the educated youth of our land. 
Its geography and antiquities should be mapped out 
clearly in their thoughts, as are the marvels of for- 
eign countries in the memory of travellers who have 
visited them. Its great men and their great deeds, 
its many poets, orators, prophets, apostles, and he- 
roes should ever people their imaginations, as an 
army of light, moving with the Lord's banners over 
the highway of the past to the land that is above. 
It should be made the book of life to them, by 
making its truths a living fire on the altar of their 
hearts. The character of God as our Father : his 
intimate presence in fact and at heart with us ; and 
his high governorship over all our thoughts and 
ways ; and all the fulness of his many great and 
loving re'ations to us, should be joyously and flam- 
ingly held up as a torch of sacred light before the 
young, in all our courses of education. In his per- 
sonal, watchful, ever-brooding care for each one of 
the race is contained the whole mystery of life, as a 
matter of his ordination, as well as the whole doc- 
trine of its work and worth to us. His plans in be- 
half of man, or the great scheme of redemption 
which contains them all, should ever stand clear 
and high like a pyramid of light, before their 
thoughts. It is because of his designs of mercy, 
that the world stands at all, and that the genera- 
tions of men come and go one after another upon 



112 THE TRUE MEASURE OP THE 

its surface. And ought a young man to be so edu- 
cated in a Christian college or school, as to know 
and think a great deal more about the Acropolis at 
Athens, or the temple of the Parthenon upon its 
brow, or the statue of the goddess within, and even 
its ornaments of gold and ivory and the sacred pep- 
lum upon its limbs, than about the very object and 
end of his own formation, and of ihat of the world 
itself? No muse, or grace, or nymph, could so 
adorn a Grrecian grove, fountain or poem, as the 
genius of religion will beautify any fireside, school 
or heart, in which it is invited to make its abode. 

Our attention has been confined thus far to the 
department of education called intelligence, and the 
elements immediately connected with it, because for 
space and time it is so large in itself, and because 
it is the foundation of all the rest, as containing the 
facts on which and with which our minds are to 
act. 

The next point to be gained in the plan of the 
higher education, beside the right kind and amount 
of intelligence, is, 

II. Aspiration, 

Man is placed at the outset at the bottom of 
the scale of intelligence and development, and 
taught to look ever upwards. Voices from above 
are perpetually calling in love to him, Come up 



HIGHEE CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 113 

higher ! Every thing that can be done to inspire 
the soul to desire and strife and hope for what is 
beyond, is among the selectest bestowments of either 
heaven or earth. No part of the work of a true 
education is more neglected than this. When once 
the mind becomes fully awake to the consciousness 
of itself, and has a true sense of what Grod is and 
what life is under him, and for him ; when it feels 
the powers of the world to come, breathing like a 
wind from Heaven upon all its being, and it sets all 
its faculties astir to fulfil its whole destiny, what 
loftiness of purpose ! what strength of zeal ! what 
energy and constancy of action will it evince in its 
high calling ! No man has any credentials from 
God for assuming the great work of a teacher, who 
is not himself full of the new wine of love for his 
work. His mind whether resting or moving any 
where must be so occupied with great thoughts at 
all times, as to be surrounded perpetually with a 
contagious aura of vitalizing influences, into which 
whoever comes will find his nature kindling at once 
into a blaze. And no one has really obtained a true 
education, who does not wear " zeal " for all high 
and good things, " as a cloak." This is the very 
meaning of the word industry which, like the words 
endue and endow, comes from the Latin induo, to 
put on or wear. It must be as much a j)art of the 



114 THE TEUE MEASURE OF THE 

man in all his public life, as his very garments, seen 
by all men wherever he is seen. 

Another great end to be secured is, 

III. Not only the power but the habit also of 
constant, full, disciplined application of all one's 
energies, in right directions. 

Information and aspiration are valuable ends to 
be secured, only as they shall become helps and 
means to the true work of life and the right develop- 
ment of the soul itself in conducting it. As a 
fountain is constructed to receive the streams minis- 
tered unto it, only to bestow them copiously upon 
those who need ; so the mind is made capable of 
receiving, merely for the purpose of giving. Work 
is the law of life to all intelligent beings, from Grod 
to the lowest creature made in his image. " My 
Father worketh hitherto," saith Christ, " and I 
work." And our work, like that of God, must be 
for others. " No man liveth to himself ; and no 
man dieth to himself." Each man is appointed of 
God, in his very constitution, to be a light-bearer to 
the world. Different indeed are the forms and 
degrees of light, that we are made capable of bear- 
ing ; but yet our work is, for each and all of us, 
everywhere the same, to " shine, that others may 
see our good works :" luminous with the inward 
light of a true noble character, and with the outward 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 115 

glow of God's manifest smile upon us and presence 
with us. Do men need discipline, drill and appli- 
cation, earnest and true, in order to accomplish 
ordinary useful ends, in social development and 
enterprise ; and how much more, in the matter of 
distributing best to the world the divine resources of 
their own immortal natures, over the wide area of 
all their physical, intellectual and moral activity, in 
behalf of their own age and of all succeeding ages. 
Men are made by their Maker to excel in different 
kinds and degrees of work. What work any one 
can perform, and therefore was made to perform, 
and in what style of thoroughness and finish, can 
never be known, except by the fullest possible 
preparation of his powers for working, the most 
vigorous outlay of them when employed, and the 
steady holding of the highest of all possible objects 
of desire and effort before the mind in their employ- 
ment ; together with that earnest, importunate 
looking of the soul to God in faith for his blessing 
upon every effort, which secures the addition of his 
strength to our own, in our enterprises. 

IV, Full power of communicating the treasures 
of light and love possessed, unto others. 

The real end of all true education is objective, 
is benevolence : the distribution of thought and 
truth to those that have them not, and the outlay 



116 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

of one's self for the world's good in every form of 
action, in a more intelligent, effective and beneficial 
manner, than otherwise. A miserly spirit of self- 
appropriation here, which is universally pronounced 
miserable in the very sense of the word miserly itself, 
is more base than in the use of money ; as light and 
knowledge are of so much higher value, and their 
bestowment is so much richer in its results. 

Men once ruled others by the club, the sceptre, 
or the sword ; and emblems of such a sort are still 
placed everywhere in the hands of titled nobles and 
magistrates ; but the rulers of the world now, where 
thinking men are found, are those who wield that 
little but mighty instrument, the pen ; and these 
are they whose hearts and tongues are most vitalized 
with truth and thought and love. Living hearts, 
living tongues, and living pens : these are the 
modern names for the weapons of which Paul spoke, 
when he said '' the weapons of our warfare are 
mighty." Mighty indeed in all ages and places is 
the truth spoken in love : the mightiest power on 
earth, next to the Spirit of Grod himself, whose word 
it is. 

Speech is the noblest vehicle of human thought 
and feeling, and not of human only, but also of 
divine. " The tongue is a little member, but 
boasteth great things." Well did the great generals 
of antiquity know, that the swords that flashed with 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 117 

tliouglit struck sharpest and deepest, and remained 
unbroken longest ; and therefore relied quite as 
much, on what words could do beforehand to put a 
living spirit within the implements of battle, as on 
what the arm could do at the time, in wielding 
them. He who remembers what the two great 
leaders of the Church, in the two chief epochs of its 
history, were, and how they executed their work : 
Moses in the Jewish world and Paul in the Chris- 
tian ; and so he who comprehends what such men 
as Demosthenes and Socrates and Cicero did, each 
in their own land and age, and how they did it ; or 
in more modern times what Luther and Calvin, and 
hundreds like them who have battled for truth and 
freedom and God, aimed to accomplish and in what 
way ; such an one will see and feel that simple, 
earnest, loving speech from one overflowing human 
heart to another is the most powerful instrumen- 
tality that man ever uses upon his fellow-men. 
The great Saviour himself when upon earth sought 
to do little else, because that alone was so much, 
than to stand uj) and speak meekly and yet power- 
fully of God and truth and heaven and the soul, to 
all men wherever he could find them, in public or 
in private. 

System, mechanism, organization and contri- 
vances of all sorts, and every kind of policy, outward 
and inward, he left to others and relied on the 



118 THE TRUE MEASURE OP THE 

simple, living contact of his own loving heart in 
open, constant converse with the hearts of others. 
The commission. Go ! preach my gospel ! is the 
only order given to his followers, for the mode of 
spreading the knowledge of his name ; and in all 
ages it has pleased God, by the foolishness of 
preaching to save those that believe. 

Who then can over-estimate the value in our 
courses of education, of thorough attention to the 
cultivation of high and true forms of expressing 
thought, or rather of communicating one's whole 
self unto others for their good. When all the other 
advantages of a true education are obtained, then 
the results of thorough training in composition and 
declamation, so as to secure the power of uttering 
one's thoughts in the most vigorous, earnest, tender, 
moving manner possible, must be superadded to 
complete the finished man. 

This part of a full style of high and true educa- 
tion for the real work of life, among those who are 
by their education to become the leaders of society, 
is greatly underrated, in nearly or quite all of our 
Colleges. How little is actually required of each 
one, throughout his entire course in this direction ! 
How often is left to the student's own immature 
valuation, the question of the loss or gain to him of 
one of the most essential of all modes of preparation 
for active life 1 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 119 

And what gifts are squandered by so many ; 
and what high faculties for impressing others with 
great truths and influences, remain voluntarily al- 
though unconsciously dormant ; faculties which 
rightly employed might set the hearts of multitudes 
ablaze with divine truths for ever ! 

V. Artistic execution. 

God is a perfect artist in all his work. What- 
ever he looks uj^on, when finished by his own hands, 
he always sees to be very good ; and this pleasurable 
survey of all his works is no small part of his bound- 
less joy. The more nearly, at whatever distance, 
any mind approaches his in style of character, the 
deeper, fuller, richer, sweeter is its sense of beauty, 
and its capability not only of enjoying but also of 
executing it. The highest of all forms of art, in 
respect to the grandeur and variety of its subjects, 
the diversity of its uses, the number of its benefici- 
aries and the splendor of its results, is the art of 
composition : or the art of making, arranging and 
expressing thought, in a manner that shall best 
answer the true end to be attained. Here not only 
do all previous knowledge and training a,nd study 
find their appropriate outlet, showing perpetually 
both their fulness and their quality ; but also in no 
way can one so perfect himself in exactness and 
power and beauty of thought, for the growth of his 



120 THE TEUE MEASURE OF THE 

own mind or the increase of his usefulness, as by tlie 
careful and continual practice of the art of compo- 
sition, upon great themes and for high ends. And 
while art in general should be greatly magnified as 
such, in all our higher courses of instruction, this 
one art itself should be specially taught in all the 
departments of criticism, taste, and style, through- 
out the whole breadth of their historical, logical, 
and rhetorical characteristics. As the utterance of 
language reacts upon the very processes of thought 
themselves, establishing and enlarging them, so 
composition, which is not only the studious elabora- 
tion of the outward expression at which point so 
many stop in all their conceptions of it, but also of 
all its inward contents, serves wonderfully to heighten 
and perfect the native vigor of the mind. 

Thirdly. In reference to the heart, 

'The habit which so many have in the work of 
education, of systematically dealing only with the 
intellect. Or rather of confining their attention and 
labor to even the most narrow part of its vast 
dimensions, is morally abnormal and absurd, A 
man is what his heart is. His faith and hopes and 
purposes : these are himself, both the foundation 
and the superstructure of his entire personality. All 
education in heaven begins and ends with the heart ; 
and so must it on earth in the family and the 
school, ere Grod's will shall be done here as it is 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 121 

above, or man be educated as lie designed in making 
the strange and varied organism of his capabilities, 
that be should be. The most impressible of all 
things in this world to outward influence and culture, 
is man himself The air and sea, which are per- 
petually in such a state of flux, are relatively im- 
mobile as if made of iron or marble, compared with 
the intensely vital instincts' and impulses of his 
nature. By insensible imitation almost, he will 
become what men and things around him claim, 
invite, or even suggest that he should become. The 
power of a right example, clothing as in a garment 
of light all true principles, and of a heart set on fire 
of heaven and earnestly at work by design to spread 
the sacred flame among others, is morally irresistible 
by the young, whose nature has been everywhere 
purposely thrown wide open by its Maker to all 
right influences from without. 

In the character of its educated men, society 
has the greatest possible interest. The more 
mighty for good is an engine, when properly used, 
the more terrible for evil is it when perverted. 
The same education, wielded as an instrument of 
great efiiciency by a heart deeply in love with God 
and man, or by one of only narrow, selfish aims and 
purposes, will be potent to produce an earth-wide 
difierence of results. How in working iron or steel 
or harnessing any of the forces of nature, must they 
6 



122 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

be tempered and gauged, and harmonized at tlie 
outset, according to tlie character of their future 
uses ! But how much more necessary to the proper 
and required issue, is that great neglected and even 
forgotten work, in all true education, of tempering 
the heart aright and adjusting all its inner forces 
to the appointed work of life. From either a per- 
verted, paralyzing sense of the greatness of man's 
natural propension to evil, or a self-excusing un- 
willingness to assume and maintain at all times an 
energetic spirit of duty and effort, most who enter 
upon the holy of&ce of instructing and forming 
other minds, neither bestow any earnest, connected 
labor, nor seem to know that they ought, upon the 
divine work of rightly moulding and beautifying 
their characters. 

The great points to be gained by the true edu- 
cator, in the character of all who drink inspiration 
from his heart and life, are such as these : elevation 
of thought, refinement, delicacy and tenderness of 
feeling, self-forgetfulness of aim, energy of purpose, 
and all pure, bright, joyous religiousness of spirit. 
Many are the forms in which these may be skilfully 
and sedulously cultivated ; and many the oppor- 
tunities, in which they may be employed by the 
teacher, who is himself their possessor. He who 
diligently seeks them as the treasures of his own 
character, will by the natural fire and heat of his 



HIGHEK CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 123 

heart, its spontaneous, ever outspoken fulness of 
desire, overflowing at all times into every kind and 
degree of expression, perpetually teach and invite 
and allure his pupils, to enter with him into the 
same "pleasant paths of wisdom." Such an one 
will not need in order to meet in a formal way the 
Bense of duty, to hold up with mock earnestness the 
dry forms of didactic precepts, as if to discharge his 
obligations with a will. Men are as little moved to 
action by skeletons of doctrine, as would be an 
army, or an audience by the skeleton of a general 
or of an orator, instead of the living, breathing man 
of their hearts himself 

Any education which is not thoroughly and 
delightfully religious, in its whole inward spirit and 
outward aim, is not only false, but abominable. 
False preaching and false teaching are the two 
great masterpieces of Satan's art, in his work of 
ruin. Man was made wholly for God ; to reach 
out towards him as a child to its parent, to run 
lovingly in his footsteps, and to abide in festive 
union of heart with him forever. For if any man, 
saith Christ, hear my voice and open the door, I 
will come in to him and sup with him and he with 
me. To call, therefore, such treacherous treatment 
of a youth as terminates not merely in his being 
indifferent to Him, but even in his not knowing 
him at all, education, what barbarity is it not 



124 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

only of language but also of sentiment ! And so, 
also, not to see and to feel, in undertaking to fash- 
ion the future of the pupil, the fact of his immor- 
tality ; to stand in the presence of his great soul, 
with no sense either of its greatness or even of its 
presence, and much more to sow daily the seeds of 
eternal joy or sorrow in it, and not be awed by any 
just conception of the solemn grandeur of such a 
Avork ; what is such ignoble conduct but absolute 
contempt of both the present and the future, of 
time and eternity, of man and of God ! Christ, 
not a dead Christ such as papists hang up as a 
curiosity in those great mausoleums of souls called 
cathedrals, or such as hearts unacquainted with his 
presence may yet describe with all the glow of 
poetic inspiration ; but the living, reigning Christ of 
heaven and earth, living and reigning in every hu- 
man heart that opens its everlasting gates to this 
king of glory, should be cherished universally by the 
wise men of the West, as, when a babe, the wise 
men of the East brought unto him gifts and gold 
and frankincense and myrrh. The odor of his gar- 
ments, which smell of cassia out of the ivory palaces 
above, should be in the halls and corridors of all 
our schools and colleges ; and every teacher in them 
should delight to bathe his feet with tears and to 
break all precious ointment upon his head. In 
every form and degree of human culture, Christ is 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 125 

the Model ; and constant, earnest, joyful labor : the 
more joyful the more directly it is laid out in his 
name : is the rule of service for him and to him ; 
while prayer and praise will ever prove themselves 
to be to all who try their power, the very wings of 
successful toil. 

The power of Christianity is in its principles, 
and not at all in its outward conditions ; and, 
therefore, the apostle knew Christ after his depart- 
ure, no more in the flesh. The power, also, of any 
human life or character lies in the fact and the 
degree of its conformity to those principles. The 
secret of Christ's influence, as a teacher, upon the 
men of his own age who did not know him as we 
do, lay in the truths that he uttered with his 
tongue and represented in his life ; and similar re- 
sults have never failed and can never fail to reap- 
pear, in the history of any one whose heart is all 
aglow with the same fire from heaven. 

All systems of education that are not vitally 
Christian are doomed, hke till perverted forms of 
government, science, literature and religion, in 
their essential constitution to perish ; and as in 
these other departments of social life, since the Ref- 
ormation, false ideas, many of them once of giant 
height and strength, have been melting away in 
rapid succession, so that infidel poetry, philosophy, 
and letters have entirely lost the deceitful glitter 



126 THE TRUE MEASURE OF THE 

that they once possessed ; so all ungodly principles 
of education are, in the end, to be still more clam- 
orously rejected and abhorred. Man, universal man, 
is yet to come into full, deep, warm sympathy with 
Grod, in his estimate of the glory of our nature 
made in his own image, and, therefore, of the high 
responsibility of him who undertakes to lead it 
forth, upon the pathway of its true development. 

The earnest use of positive religious influence 
in the work of education, is neglected by many, on 
theory or by blind impulse, who yet profess to 
acknowledge its amazing value ; by some, from a 
fooHsh fear of being regarded as hyper-denomina- 
tional ; by others, from a blind sense of the fact, 
that in the economy of modern society the office of 
religious instruction is assigned, in its general 
division of labor, to the ministry as their special 
work ; and by others still, from the feeling, that 
the art of right religious stimulation and guidance 
is one, in which they hardly know where to step or 
where to stand. It isj indeed, one of the greatest 
of all arts, as also of all modes of usefulness, to 
know how to bring completely one's whole person- 
ality into bright and burning contact at all points, 
with the natures and wants of others. The right 
use of religious power over them is not, however, to 
be of a formal and fixed character, or occasional in 
its seasons ; but, spontaneous, perpetual, and ever- 



HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 127 

varied, according to the everchanging aspects of 
nature and of life and of each soul, that gives or 
receives the blessing of communicated love. 

The teacher, if possessed of intellectual and 
genial personal qualities alike and fully devoted to 
the cause of Grod, can do a vrork which, if neglected, 
the ministry with whatever weajDonry of truth and 
love may ever afterwards attempt in vain. The 
recipients of his influence are exceedingly impressi- 
ble, and as never again in subsequent years. He 
not only teaches but trains them, if faithful, to 
walk in the paths of uprightness. And, yet, his is 
the calling so noble and divine, which is commonly 
so lightly esteemed, and whose honor, most who 
undertake its vindication would determine by some 
of its higher positions so called, instead of by its 
own great intrinsic merit, as a vocation : as high in 
itself, as any mortal can presume to enter uncalled, 
or feel that he has received a commission from 
above to undertake. 



III. 

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 



III. 

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

There is no relation in wbicli God stands more 
conspicuously and constantly before His intelligent 
creatures, than that of a teacher : ever showing him- 
self to them, as the Infinite Counterpart of their 
being, in respect to all its capacities and all its 
wants ; and summoning purposely, by every pos- 
sible variety of object appeal and influence, in his 
works and word, every faculty of their natures into 
full exercise. The highest also of all Christ's offices 
when on earth, except in the very article of death 
as man's atonement, which expresses indeed his 
dearest relationship to man, was that of our great 
Teacher. And so fully is the whole universe, \<f hich 
is everywhere pervaded with God's being, pervaded 
also, almost equally, with His sense of the value of 
the high work of education, that all the forms of 
matter around us are astir with mute eloquence, 
" uttering speech" of Him. Voices of the day and 
night are ever crying to each listening ear : God is 



132 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

good and man is great : eacli hour is precious and 
the future is unending ! It is a holy ofiQee indeed to 
teach. To guide a weary traveller through the 
pathless woods ; to conduct an invalid to the foun- 
tain of perpetual health ; to restore a lost child to 
its parent's arms ; and much more to plant the feet 
of some poor wanderer from his God in the path- 
ways of virtue again : is there any class of deeds, to 
which the universal heart of Humanity more in- 
stinctively and sympathetically responds as noble ? 
And yet these are but separate, occasional symbols 
of the higher service of the teacher, who is ever sys- 
tematically, artistically, patiently and prayerfully 
at work, to lead each pupil upon the highway of 
glory and honor and immortality for himself ; and to 
prepare him also in the best manner, in spirit and 
power, to lead as many others as possible in his 
train. In tender watchfulness and care, he combines 
in the prosecution of his plans, all the devotion of a 
gardener to a; favorite plant, of a nurse to a sick 
friend, of a physician to a cherished patient, and 
even of a parent to a loved child, with the study 
and taste and delicate execution of an accomplished 
artist, rejoicing in his art. 

But consider more minutely, 

I. His spirit. 

II. His labors. 



THE TEUE CHKISTIAN TEACHEK. 133 

I. And wliat of his spirit ? Mucli in every 
way. 

1st. He loves his work. 

Others may move, as so many do, discontent-edly 
through their daily duties and experiences ; as, in 
the days of Horace, " Said the soldier, oh the fortu- 
nate merchants; and the lawyer praised the farmer; 
and the farmer cried out that they only were happy 
who lived in the city.^' But he, as each new morn- 
ing opens its golden gates before him for action and 
enjoyment, comes forth from the chamber of his 
repose to his loved work, like a strong man rejoicing 
to run a race. How can one, on whose neck his 
daily employment, and with it his daily existence, 
hangs as an unwilling weight, stand up worthily in 
his appointed lot ! Both God and man love cheer- 
ful givers and cheerful workers. The true teacher, 
like the true poet or preacher, who cannot but speak 
the things that he has seen and heard from above, 
teaches because he must. Woe is unto him if he 
teaches not, as said the apostle, woe was unto him 
if he preached not the gospel. Although many 
wonder what charms he can find in what they deem 
so laborious and thankless an employment, all its 
heights are to him of Alpine grandeur ; and all its 
breadths of ocean-width. His very estimate of the 
exceeding glory of his calling, is itself his special 
anointing for it from on high : the fire that is in 



134 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER, 

his heart, has been kindled hy a hand divine. He 
not only sees a vastness of dimensions which others 
do not comprehend, in the sphere of happy toil to 
which God has beckoned him, but also an infinite 
fulness of details, ever inviting his attention and 
pleasure, which their feeble vision cannot traverse. 
They having eyes see not, and having ears hear 
not, the things which rivet and ravish his thoughts. 
As with all men sent of God on a special errand to 
the world, his impulse to action in his chosen work 
is not that of a cool determination, to make in his 
life as it were a geometrical demonstration of some 
theorem of duty ; but a spontaneous, native, ever- 
glowing force, divine alike in its origin and in its 
aim. Not more naturally, by the very necessities 
of its own germinal outgrowth, does a plant hold 
brightly up to view, on the very summit of its 
strength, its appointed flower where all its forces of 
life and color and fragrance are concentrated ; or a 
bird carol by the sweet compulsion of its nature in 
a tree the song which has been given to it to sing, 
than his soul delights in all its joyousness to empty 
its riches bountifully, as if by the force of a heavenly 
instinct, into the hearts of others. The proper 
governors, and leaders and great men of the world 
are made by the same great Being, who made the 
mountains and the seas ; and who certainly would 
be quite as apt to provide society with an abun- 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER, 135 

dance of its higher resources and endowments, as to 
furnish, as He everywhere has done, any of its sep- 
arate and subordinate elements and appliances in 
such a way ; which yet themselves exist only for its 
sake. Happy is that community which knows how 
to find and to use the leaders, prepared for it of 
God. They carry all their ensigns of nobility within 
them and not upon them, for mere outward show. 
Yea ! happy is that community which does not, by 
artificial restraints, repress their native conscious- 
ness of their true position in their age or lead them 
away by false lures from their designated work of 
high and holy leadership to their generation. In 
the day when kings shall be nursing fathers and 
queens nursing mothers to the church, kingly minds 
and queenly hearts : what an universal outburst of 
mental and moral vitality will then be seen over 
the face of the whole world ! and how will the kin- 
dred offices of the jDarent and the teacher appear, 
like two pillars of light rising from earth to heaven 
and connecting them forever, as with bands of 
beauty, to each other ! So thinks the true Chris- 
tian teacher of his calling. He loves it : he rejoices 
in it : it is his very meat and drink, to do his 
Father's will in this high form of holy enterprise 
for Him. 

The relation in which the teacher stands to his 
pupil, is in some respects higher even than that of 



136 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

the parent himself. The mind of a youth is^ at 
the first, but a vast sensorium of impressions, as his 
heart is of influences, vital in every part and always 
in inward motion from one form of conception or per- 
ception to another. On his soul in its native open- 
ness, unperverted by abuse from himself or others, 
every cloud casts its shadow ; every tree shakes its 
leaves when green and drops them when dead ; every 
flower breathes its fragrance ; and the hills and 
dales, the summer-fields and the quiet streams, 
image themselves in ever still happy repose. He 
is prepared in all the sensitive, receptive and emo- 
tional elements and adaptations of his nature, to be 
influenced at the outset almost wholly, as if only 
susceptible and passive under impressions from 
without, by the whole, grand, imposing array of 
things and beings around him ; while yet in the 
end, when accoutred for the work with strength 
and experience and disciplined skill, he is to react 
upon the surrounding universe, and to use time and 
space and opportunity and men and matter, with 
all its outward forms and inward forces and laws of 
gravity and momentum, and its capacities for the 
composition and resolution of its elements and 
agencies in every varied way, to carve his own ideas 
and plans upon the world and upon mankind, be- 
fore leaving them. 

What now is to be done to this easily moved 



THE TftUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 137 

and miglitily moving nature ; and what is to be 
done for it, in the sublime process of its right de- 
velopment ? Is the stream of its sensations and 
impulses, its ideas and intentions, to flow on in a 
wild flood of chance experiences and issues ? Or, 
is impulse to be put under the check of principle ; 
and energy to be led into right .directions ; and dis- 
cipline to bring forces, otherwise blind and ruinous 
in their action, into powerful subserviency to great 
ends ? The intelligent parent trains his child to, 
at least, apparent obedience, and to the forms of 
polite intercourse with others ; and here usually the 
scale of home-education begins and ends, although 
with an elect few it is held to be a high angelic art, 
of many diversified ends and appliances, demanding 
at all times thought and effort and grace, in their 
best degrees and modes. But, hoWever high a 
parent's estimate may be of the greatness of his 
duty as an educator, the teacher has still a work to 
do which the parent has not : to train the mind of 
his pupil to true, full, constant self-productiveness, 
up to the entire strength of his resources natural 
and acquired ; or in other words to fashion and fix 
his working faculties as a steward of God and a man 
among men, according to such tastes and habits, 
that from his whole active life as a thinking, willing, 
busy being, there shall actually come to mankind 



138 THE TRUE CPIRISTIAN TEACHER, 

the greatest possible tribute of service, whicli God 
has made bim capable of rendering. 

2dly. The true Christian teacher loves his 
pupils. 

He loves them personally. A man may love his 
employment, as an anatomist loves surgery ; or a 
painter his studio ; or a soldier the hour of battle ; 
and yet take no interest in him who is afPected by it, 
except as furnishing him an opportunity of new 
professional labor or skill. But the true educator, 
not only feels himself towards each pupil, but makes 
him also feel it, that he is his personal friend. This 
conviction is infallible in his pupil's mind, and 
comes swiftly and strongly in its course, because he 
really is such, and shows it therefore in all his looks 
and tones, his words and plans and deeds. The 
sentiment of personal consecration to their good 
possesses him, as an ever-present inspiration ; and 
the perpetual manifestation of its light perpetually 
entrances their eyes and hearts. 

Love begets love : this is its normal product. 
The love of the superior must precede that of the 
inferior, and call it into life. This is God's mode of 
vitalizing the universe with the power of love ; and 
it must be man's. " Speaking the truth in love" : 
this is the Scrij)tural, the philosophic and the only 
practical way of influencing minds in any right 
direction. Truth and love, if employed to their 



THE TEUE CHKISTIAN TEACHER. 139 

utmost strengtli, what results could they not ac- 
complish, in blended beauty and power, in the 
family and the school, the church and the state ! 
Mighty indeed are our weapons, tempered and edged 
above for our work. 

The path of the true Christian teacher is that 
of the just man, shining more and more unto the 
perfect day : ever ascending from earth to heaven 
into more and more light and into more and more 
joy. Mounting himself with transport, upon such 
a path of ever new progress and expanding vision 
and beauteous discoveiy, he never ceases to be eager 
tliat those who are behind should hasten on with 
flying feet, and share with him the continual rapture 
of his life. Compared with such an one scaling 
height after height of knowledge and pleasure, and 
stopping at each new point as he rises, only to shout 
his joy with eagerness, to those who are toiling on 
after him below : in what a pitiable contrast does 
he stand, who, instead of cHmbing upwards to new 
attainments, sits quietly down by the roadside and 
amuses himself and his pupils with those cheap 
trinkets, the petty prizes of a school or college, or 
even of the larger world beyond them, as the chosen 
incentives to toil and aspiration. But how, one may 
well ask, how can ye believe or how can ye become 
great, who seek honor one from another. And 
flattery to which so many resort as a substitute for 



140 THE TEUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

love, expecting to accomplish by it in a word, "what 
much, patient, loving labor only can achieve, what a 
breath of poison does it spread over all the tender 
fibrils of the heart ! It is the bane of all piety, 
eloquence, action, poetry, music, art, business or 
personal development in any form, to begin or end 
in selfishness. Under such an overlying rock 
nothing that has any life from Heaven in it, can 
grow. Deeply does the true teacher feel this great 
fact, and does not content himself with working 
upon any perverse or even merely superficial ele- 
ments, in the character of his pupil. He breathes 
and moves and acts at once, only and for ever, upon 
the deepest and strongest elements of his being. 

His love is the same in kind as that which stirs. 
an angeFs heart and harp ; for he is engaged in the 
same high work, ministering unto candidates for 
immortality, health and strength and joy. As his 
pupils stand before him veiled in mortal flesh, he 
beholds them in their inner nature rather than their 
outer, unrobed of all the meannesses of their tem- 
porary, earthly state ; and feels that his appointed 
work, to lead them to glory and to God, is august 
indeed beyond his vastest conceptions. 

And as, in the review also of the means and 
appliances adopted for his own education, he sees 
and feels most deeply what might have been done 
by higher skill and finer art and greater labor and 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 141 

warmer lov^e, in unfolding and beautifying his intel- 
lect and heart ; he carefully and lovingly undertakes 
to avoid himself all the mistakes which he can dis- 
cover, and to add to his work every new and higher 
advantage, which, his own experience or reflection 
can suggest. 

With no such weak theory to mislead him, as 
that Grod has constituted minds all of one original 
mould and grade in power and brightness, he studies 
with keen relish and discrimination the peculiarities 
of each jDupil committed to his care, and his capaci- 
ties, susceptibilities, idiosyncracies, habits and all 
the elements of vital force or feebleness, that enter 
into his composition : so that each one, instead of 
being lost in any general aggregate, stands before 
his thoughts in his own, clear, individualized per- 
sonality. 

3dly. He loves his Master. 

He has chosen his calling, as his highest mode 
of serving Christ. Christ set before the soul by its 
own choice, as the great commanding object of its 
life, will fully, yes ! alone, draw out all its hidden 
powers and resources into action. How often is 
what is true only of direct love to Him, as the great 
motor-force of one's being, ascribed ^o a spirit of 
self-sacrifice, which is but one of its many products. 
Self is but the mere point of an endless circumfer- 
ence. Self has neither breadth nor depth enough 



142 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

in it in any form„ positive or negative, as an atmos- 
phere for our thouglits to float in. The highest 
form of unselfishness is absolute self-forgetfulness, 
in which state of heart as in the blaze of a furnace, 
all ideas of self-denial and self-sacrifice are immedi- 
ately consumed. Christ, only Christ : in this sen- 
timent is the highest vital energy that can walk up 
and down, whether in kingly robes and aspects or 
not, in the family, the school, the pulpit, the press, 
the halls of legislation, or the courts of justice. 

True teaching, like true living or true feeling, is 
and must be rehgious : not theoretically, formally 
or negatively alone, but actually, designedly and 
earnestly. With what a train of sweet influences, 
does one who thus zealously labors for God, move 
among his pupils ? Light from above is in all his 
features ; and the scent as of a garden of spices is 
in his garments. The eyes and ears of the young 
are made to be tenderly and thrillingly touched, by 
looks and tones that are filled with the Spirit of 
Heaven. He who bears these elements of moral 
energy in his person, because filled with them in his 
heart, always finds the young bending with sweet 
responsiveness to their influence, as if under the 
magic spell of some strange invisible power, con- 
straining their thoughts and feelings to its will. 
How beautifully is childhood conformed in all its 
opennesses to the selectest social and religious influ- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 143 

ences, and in all its aptitudes for faith and love and 
joy, to the idea that the highest forces of the world 
are moral. How vividly, in this dawning freshness 
of our being, are the practical lessons of life imaged 
to our view ! that this world is but the seed-jolot 
and nursery of the next ; that the family-institution 
is normally a school of Christ ; that the parent is 
God's representative in his household, for truth and 
law and every thing great and good ; and that the 
true discijiline and development of our brief earthly 
state is that of faith. 

The true Christian teacher feels in his work the 
inspiration of these great facts. His very love for 
his Master leads him to desire the office of a teacher 
of minds and trainer of characters under him, and 
to value childhood as the most inviting of all fields 
of labor in His cause. 

But consider, 

IT. The labors of a true Christian teacher. 

Labor is to him joy. It is on the wheel of toil 
that every thing in this world moves. Work is the 
very law of intellectual, as of agricultural, mechani- 
cal or commercial, life. The progress of history, all 
human improvements and the whole, steady move- 
ment of each generation above the preceding, are all 
but so many chapters of the results of labor. To 
multitudes toil is either practically or theoretically an 



144 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

abhorrence. Next to serving Him who perpetually 
exemplifies the power and the pleasure of ceaseless 
activity in his own high being, as the great foun- 
tain of his constant enjoyment and beneficence ; 
and who has ordained this law of mental and moral 
life, as one of the very necessities of existence over 
all his intelligent creatures : there is nothing that 
mankind dishke so much to do, as to maintain a 
life of laborious industry. There are many who 
speak and more who think of labor as a curse. 
This is indeed the common, thoughtless and yet 
willing interpretation of the curse upon Adam : by 
the sweat of thy brow thou shalt gain thy bread. 
And in the same way, those of such sluggish natures 
look up languidly in their, thoughts towards 
Heaven, as a place of inactive rest, as if God him- 
self could be in a state of dull repose, or as if any 
creature could be dormant in the intense glory of 
his immediate presence. No ! work is no curse, 
except to him who curses his own nature in think- 
ing so : to a right mind and a true heart it is per- 
petual pastime. The spirit of labor is one of man's 
highest honors, as its results are his highest rewards. 
Not labor was the curse, but the direction in which 
it was appointed : to obtain the elements of bodily 
subsistence, to extort from the earth, before yield- 
ing its bounty unasked but now covered with thorns 
and briars, food and raiment ; and thus to devote 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 145 

to physical things that attention, which might 
otherwise have heen fixed by man as by the angels, 
with intense gladness upon higher employments and 
pleasures. Such was the curse : to return to dust 
again and to spend the brief interval of life here in 
the dust, serving the wants of that body in yielding 
to whose cravings our first parents sinned. And 
the rest of Heaven is rest from toil for physical sub- 
sistence, as well as from all conflicts within and all 
foes from without : the rest of high thought and of 
deep love, that perfect balancing of one's whole 
being, in the full harmonious exercise forever of 
every susceptibility and activity of the soul towards 
the greatest of all objects, and in the best of all 
ways, which leaves no room for any want and no 
sense of any wearisomeness. 

Such a sublime course of effort as that, to 
which the true Christian teacher has consecrated his 
life, will demand for its right execution, the most 
earnest, constant, thoughtful, skilful labor. The 
spirit of work also is one of the very first elements, 
that he must set in motion, and ever keep alive in 
the hearts of his pupils. 

There are two separate spheres of toil in which 
he must be viewed, in order to be rightly compre- 
hended : at home and at school. 

Behold him then 

1st. In the midst of his labors at home. 
7 



146 THE TEUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

§ 1. Here, as a physician or lawyer, who is else- 
where completely involved in the practical duties of 
his profession, studies the facts and philosophy of 
his cases, so he carefully analyzes and defines to his 
own eye the condition, and wants of his pupils, and 
the most efficient mode of meeting them. In the 
noblest of fields one surely cannot work blindly : in 
the highest of arts, he cannot reach success on a 
pathway of guesses. It is the trained eye and hand 
that hit the mark. The laws of matter are not 
more exact than are those of prosperous labor, in 
things spiritual alike and intellectual. 

§ 2. At home also he strives to enlarge his own 
foundations perpetually, as a scholar and a teacher. 
The greater the breadth and fulness of liis own 
attainments of knowledge, the better will be his 
capacity for appreciating and selecting the true 
elements, for kind and number, of the higher educa- 
tion. The larger his own acquisitions of mental 
discipline and power, the more competent will he 
be to lead others through difficulties and deserts, 
into the realms of thought and truth, the land of 
light and harvests upon earth, which is like to 
that above. The fresher his own spirit with glad- 
ness from constant triumphs of discovery and con- 
quest, the more will his example flame as a guiding 
star, to those whom, he would animate with a spirit 
of lofty endeavor. By energetic labor at home he 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 147 

has made himself what he is ; and in the same way 
he will keep ever rising into new attainments. 

(1.) One of his felt duties and efforts at home 
will be, to keep himself fully informed of passing 
events : so as to be in complete sympathy with the 
great community of those who are living in the 
same age. 

Each man needs for his own sake to feel the 
pressure of his age upon him, as in it and for it he 
is required to conduct himself, as a true man. 
Here is the horizon of his earthly being ; and amid 
its circumstances, forces and movements he is to 
live and grow and act, as in his native element. 
This age has in it the strength and fulness of all 
preceding ages. In it they find their culmination 
and consummation. How is a whole volume of 
history often suddenly unrolled at our feet in a 
single day ! Each new age makes its own special 
demands on the men that belong to it ; and each 
man belongs in fact as specifically to his own age, 
as any race of men or animals or plants to the zone 
in which they occur. And how can one prepare 
others in all the elements and forms of a right edu- 
cational outfit for life just as it is, who does not 
well know and deeply feel the actual condition and 
urgencies of the times. So many mischoose their 
proper occupation in life, and is not the number 
legion, because not having seen themselves, nor 



148 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

having had teachers who saw hefore them and for 
them, what it was that God and man would have 
them do while upon the earth. The common 
charge and much more the common fact if it be 
such, that our educational appliances fail in the 
result, of any thing like a real adequate preparation 
for life as it is, should lead to a careful examination 
of what can be done, what ought to be done and 
what in fact is done, in so high a sphere of action 
and influence. 

(2.) The true teacher will also employ himself, 
at home, in close earnest study. Every day will 
be fruitful to him in new ideas. To study is his 
joy, as it gives delightful employment to his mind, 
which must otherwise fold in its powers in dull pas- 
sivity upon itself ; and as also wherever he turns 
his eye eagerly, to find something new above, around, 
beneath or within him, every effort is rewarded with 
discovery ; and the whole universe he finds is full 
of ever new, unthought-of riches, awaiting his re- 
search. 

Do not many of even our so-called higher pro- 
fessional teachers,like the mass of our other educated 
men, come to be quite stationary in all elements 
and forms of mental advancement, at a very early 
period ? How few grow as continuously and rapidly, 
from thirty-five to sixty as from fifteen to thirty- 
five ; and yet with the larger facilities of study, and 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 149 

the higher powers of intellectual movement belong- 
ing to full manhood, and all the stimulus to be 
derived from the pleasure and profit of past acqui- 
sition, and the advantage of trained habits, and the 
wider scope obtained for the practical employment 
of new knowledge and new inward augmentations 
of power, ought not a higher rate of increase to be 
expected of our intellectual men at this period of 
their lives, than ever before ? The awful difhculty 
is, that, such is the vis inertice of most minds, so 
small is the felt pressure of the great unrealized 
future, vast and wonderful beyond all conception as 
it is, when a comfortable livelihood is obtained, the 
energies of multitudes at once stagnate as if the end 
of life were gained, and as if they themselves, with 
all their apparatus of subhme faculties, were after 
all but well-appointed machines for grinding out a 
certain modicum of earthly comfort, or of earthly 
show. 

The field of labor opening before the true 
teacher for perpetual acquisitions, is twofold : that 
of the study or class of studies, which, from his 
peculiar taste for them or success in them, he con- 
siders his specialty and that of general scholarship, 
in which, in common with all educated men, he de- 
sires to obtain as much knowledge as he can, in the 
direction of the great wide all-embracing drift of 
his general thoughts and efforts, as a man. He 



150 THE TRUE CHEISTAIN TEACHER. 

who would fire others with a spirit of progress, must 
possess that spirit himself. He, who would lead 
them to seek for great acquisitions, must have large 
wealth of his own to use. The teacher's ideals, in 
repect to the style of his work and the measure of 
his successes will become, whether with his desire 
or without it, the ideals adopted by his pupils. In 
the study of painting, sculpture, music or any high 
mechanical art, men act wisely in seeking only those 
to instruct them, who themselves excel in the prac- 
tical execution of that art. And so, in the sphere 
of personal education, he who comes into full, warm 
communion of soul with one who is ever rising eagerly 
himself, from height to height of intellectual pro- 
gress, is blest indeed ; for he has a leader in spirit 
as well as in form, a living, active, zealous guide to 
the great things of heaven and earth. But where 
are such men, of fervid interest in their own con- 
stant improvement alike and that of others, to be 
found ? Is any profession more disgraced by 
abounding indifferentism among those who have 
ventured, unbidden of God or man, within its sacred 
precincts ? A man filled to the full with knowl- 
edge and thought and high desire, is in liis looks 
and postures and motions and words, completely 
antipodal to the style of manhood to which he could 
otherwise attain, and to which the mass around 
him of even so-called educated men do attain. 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 151 

The umittered language of the eye, the mien and 
the manner, breathed out from the whole manifest 
purpose and conviction of the soul : this reaches 
more quickly and vividly the inner ear of the mind, 
than words spoken to the outward ear, which often 
never pass, at all, out of its chambers into those of 
the heart. 

The greatest want among the working forces of 
our educational system, is the want of men of lofty 
purpose in the profession : men determined to take 
possession of its broadest and richest fields, and to 
scale its grandest heights. There are not giants 
enough among our scholars : a class indeed includ- 
ing multitudes more in name than belong to it in 
fact. But the greatest glory of any people, next to 
general religion and general liberty, is true, thorough, 
general scholarship ; with such heights of private 
scholarship) swelling and rising upwards out of it, 
as shall give to society everywhere in things intel- 
lectual and moral an abundance of bold mountain- 
scenery, and of clear strong mountain-air. 

But consider the true teacher at work, 

2dly. In school. 

Here is the spot where he brings, joyfully, all 
the riches of his heart, and of a life spent in labor 
and prayer, with much purpose and plan and hope, 
and lays them down, lovingly and trustfully, at the 
feet of his Master as a tribute of love to Him, and 



152 THE TEUE CHKISTIAN TEACHEE. 

at the feet of liis pupils with deep holy longings to 
do them good. He comes not hither, therefore, as 
a laggard who has found life full of cheats ; or who 
works against his will, because the curse of work is ■ 
upon him, Not with slow and measured steps of 
feeling, does his heart return to its daily toil, as a 
captive held in honds ; but as a deer when uncon- 
fined would bound away exulting to his forest-home, 
or an eagle would fly aloft from an open cage into 
the upper air. Is there, one may ask, can there by 
any possibility be, such food for strong thought and 
exhilarated energy in a mere school-room, when 
surrounded by children, altogether unripe in years 
and knowledge, whose eyes are quite unopened yet 
to the vast and beautiful universe around them ; 
and whose ears are so deaf to all its higher voices 
and all its profoundest harmonies, as not even to 
bear them yet at all. Yes ! give me but one child 
of the Highest, into the living chords of whose 
being I am to breathe thought and feeling ; the 
light of whose spirit I am to kindle ; and the tread 
of whose footsteps over this dark world and into the 
gorgeous future beyond, are to be shaped by me, and 
you put at once the crown of a king upon my head, 
and the wand of a prophet into my hand ; and you 
commission me to do a work the sense of which, if I 
have any true sense of it, will give a divine energy 



THE TRUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 153 

and dignity, at once, to all my movements, because 
it is the highest of all work on earth for God, 

In order rightly to appreciate the teacher, as a 
workman, in reference both to the style of his woik 
and also his own genius and nobleness in rightly 
conducting it, we must consider briefly the natural 
preparation of those, for whom and on whom he is to 
labor, for his plans of effort in their behalf ; and 
look also, in contrast with the true teacher's style 
of influence upon them, at the frequent and indeed 
common way in which they are mismanaged and 
abused. 

Children have certain special characteristics, as 
such, adapting them to receive, just at the period 
of his contact with them, his full formative influ- 
ence. What then are the preparatives of childhood 
and youth, for the reception of deep determinate 
influences into the character ? Behold them ! they 
are elements of susceptibility and activity, that are 
always reaching, blindly and yet instinctively, after 
a supply of their wants. They are these : inquisi- 
tiveness, or a great desire to know more ; acquisi- 
tiveness, or a great desire to own more ; great 
sensitiveness to others' thoughts and remarks con- 
cerning them ; a restless love of action ; delight in 
every new conscious exercise of power ; special 
confidence in their natural . guides as appointed of 

God for them, their parents and teachers ; a spirit 
7* 



154 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

of constant imitation ; buoyant, ever-bubbling sport- 
iveness of feeling ; and, in general, a full broad 
openness of nature to receive whatever person or 
influence that approaches them, in a genial stimu- 
lating persistent way. These elements enumerated 
all belong in special strength to the period of youth 
as such ; and are so many open avenues to action 
and influence over the heart, at the fi.rst, which are 
soon afterwards closed one after the other, by self- 
ishness or suspiciousness, to all access from without, 
except by formal and cautious permission. 

But, in what terrific ways are these tender 
sensibilities of childhood to right influence generally 
abused ! The uprisings of curiosity are battered 
down by ridicule : the spirit of acquisition is un- 
noticed, or led aside from the pursuit of knowledge 
or of excellence, to shrewd and sharp ways of making 
gain : the delicate susceptibilities are ruthlessly 
trampled under foot : the desire for activity is 
allowed to run into a love of mischief, so that it is 
deemed by many complimentary to a child to call 
him roguish : the disposition to confide in those who 
are his superiors is so often thrust at with marvels 
and tricks and deceits, that even the young child 
ordinarily learns early to be suspicious : his love of 
imitation, instead of being the silken chord that God 
designed it to be for leading him towards heaven, 
becomes a chain of darkness in the hands of false 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 155 

guides leading him to ruin, who yet laugh constantly 
at the deceptions that they practise upon him and 
at his own short steps and many falls in following 
after them ; while all the glad imj)ulses of his 
young, laughing heart, are so deadened by stolid 
indifference to him or by vexatious teasing or by 
constant interdicts upon his own appropriate pleas- 
ures, that a large proportion of our youths have old 
faces and dry hearts and dull pulses, while yet in 
their teens. 

How different from such foolish, false and cruel 
treatment of the young, is that other mode of deal- 
ing with them and their interests, which is inspired 
by just views of their immortal natures ; and, which, 
ever flowing in a strong stream from a heart full of 
joy itself, abounds in such beautiful elements of 
influence, as these : constant sympathy with them 
in their joys and sorrows : glad attention to their 
wants and ways : readiness to overlook little offences, 
and to interpret all things in them generously ; and 
unbounded devotion to their improvement and hap- 
piness at all times. 

That the true teacher may be seen as he is in 
school, we must look at him, in the four great modes 
of labor which there open before him : instruction, 
government, personal influence and direct religious 
effort. 

1st. Instruction. 



156 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

To instruct^ from Latin instruo, means literally 
to pile up or upon, to prepare, to furnish. ; and this 
indeed is real instruction : the right and full furnish- 
ing of the youthful mind for life as it is, for its duties 
and experiences, its toils and pleasures. The true 
teacher has a definite aim in his work, by which it 
is all shaped, and with the spirit of which every part 
of it is animated ; and that is the procurement in 
each individual of the systematic and symmetrical 
development of his entire nature, as both a receptive 
and active being of high endowments, invited and 
commanded of God to spend all his powers and 
resources, as best he can, for Him. 

§ 1. His first and constant 'effort is, to get each 
pupil vigorously at work for his own self-culture. 
Application is the lever of all his plans and hopes 
for the student. He has no idea of overlaying his 
mind with learning, as a gilded external accom- 
plishment ; or of ministering, in any way, to the 
petty conceits of a weak and idle nature. He is 
ever intent therefore upon stimulating his pupils, in 
all possible ways, in season and out of season, to 
wakefulness of thought, loftiness of aim, and energy 
of purpose. Whatever new ideas -or influences he 
can set in motion at any time in their hearts, con- 
cerning the value of knowledge, the preciousness of 
time, the glory of man's mental and moral cvmsti- 
tution, the magnificence of the universe, as the field 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHEE. 157 

in whicli his thonglits and plans are to range, the 
greatness of the future, and the ineffable majesty of 
God, as his King and Friend and Father, he is 
watchful and eager to communicate. All his looks 
and words and deeds are full of the light of these 
great truths, ever burning with intense heat upon 
the altar of his own heart ; and the holy fire he can- 
not keep pent up, if he would, within the narrow 
chambers of his own single soul. 

In these views is contained the true commentary 
upon the remark so often made by parents, and true 
as far as it goes, which is only however half way of 
the whole reality, that a given boy can be readily 
coaxed but not driven ; and that he needs to be 
encouraged. He does indeed : he needs to be en- 
couraged to what is right ; and as truly and as 
earnestly discouraged from what is wrong. 

§ 2. The true teacher also continually sets obsta- 
cles, of set purpose, over against each pupil, which 
he must overcome or be overcome by them. This is 
God's mode of training men in his providence to 
greatness of intellect and heart ; and although s^o 
many object to it, as so full of mystery in Him and 
of trial to themselves, it would be difficult, it is 
certain, to invent any other system which would be 
ec[ually effective in habituating men to strong 
thought and action. In every Conceivable way 
beside, the mind would be left to the drift of its own 



158 THE TEUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

caprices : foi-ever floating, as an inert mass of con- 
sciousness, upon a sea of chance or fate. But if 
such be the plan of that great Being, in guiding his 
children to the greatest possible enlargement of their 
powers, who made them on purpose to educate them ; 
any, surely, who are engaged subordinately in the 
same labors, may well imitate His example. This 
is indeed the perfection of art, of mechanical skill, 
of parental duty, of statesmanship and of all high 
and true educational treatment of men, to watch 
carefully how God accomplishes, in the mighty 
sphere of His activity, the same kind of results which 
we seek ; and then carefully and prayerfully, al- 
though at such great distance, to tread in his foot- 
steps, according to the measure of the sphere which 
we are to occupy, and our capacity for filling it. 

§ 3. He aims to establish, by regularity of ar- 
rangements, requirements and practice in his work, 
perfect method in the working of the student's 
powers, as well as in his own chosen use of his time. 
The absolute method, established by God in all the 
movements of the masses of matter, constituting the 
physical universe, as well as in the many chemical 
and vital processes, that are witnessed in every part 
of them, is among the most noticeable and amazing 
wonders of His hand. Absolute method is one of 
the essentials of absolute perfection ; and an ever- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 159 

present necessity for absolute success in any direc- 
tion by the finite mind. 

§ 4. He aims to establish, by the exact com- 
prehensive, and critical style of his requisitions in 
the recitation-room, the highest and truest ideals 
possible, in the scholar's mind, of what real study is 
and what are true scholarly attainments. Great is 
his sense of responsibility about this part of his 
work ; for here is the secret fountain of its largest 
issues, for good or evil. A recitation such an one 
does not consider as a piece of vain self-exhibition, 
on the part of the successful, and much less as so 
much drudgery to himself, made necessary for the 
sake of obtaining a livelihood or meeting the mere 
professional demands of his calling ; but as the 
time and the place in which he with his trained 
powers, is to sit in judgment upon a series of mental 
researches and decisions, made deliberately by the 
pupil, and offered to him respectfully and con- 
fidingly for his endorsement or condemnation ; and 
in which he is to apply all kinds of tests, chemical 
and mechanical, to the quality of the intellectual 
work presented, as a specimen not only of the native 
and acquired power of his mind when at work, but 
also of its conceptions what the style of that work 
should be. His criticisms, whatever they may be, 
will all be not of a destructive but constructive 
influence, not depres'sing and humiliating but 



160 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

guiding, inspiring and warming in their style and 
tone. From under sucli searching, kindling treat- 
ment, a mind of good quality for power and respon- 
sive to it in its moods of feeling, must come forth in 
the end, like gold from a furnace seven times puri- 
fied, bright and beautiful. 

What the pupil studies under a faithful guide 
and master, he studies until he learns ; and what 
he learns he learns to keep and to use, to use 
familiarly with the same freedom and effect as a 
part of his inward self, with which he makes use 
of his bodily limbs in his outward nature. While 
the true teacher will not despise, but rather highly 
value, a vast capacious memory : unlike many shal- 
low revilers of this noble faculty, who, from either 
not possessing it themselves to any great degree, or 
not having ever freighted it with any thing but 
cheap wares, do not know its worth ; he will yet 
strive with all earnestness, to reach and fire per- 
petually all the higher faculties of the soul, and to 
find a permanent lodgment in the reason and the 
conscience for as many ideas and principles as pos- 
sible. In teaching the pupil ideas as such, and 
leaving him so far as possible to express them in his 
own words, instead of using the forms and formulas 
which others have devised for their utterance, you 
teach him to acquire power of language and self- 
possession as a thinker, in th© presence of others ; 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 161 

wliile at the same time training liim to make all his 
labor definite in his studies, and all his conquests 
sure. 

How simple therefore and yet how precious are 
the secrets of the true teacher's success, in the 
office of instruction ! They are, on the one hand, 
the thorough intellectuality and spirituality of liis 
labors, and, on the other, such effective elements of 
action in his work as these : constant stimulation ; 
exact method ; close critical requisitions ; and 
thorough patient drill, connected with frequent sys- 
tematic reviewing, so as to make secure and familiar 
all acquisitions that may be obtained. 

In the specific act of -instruction itself, what 
various elements of power can be employed by one 
earnestly devoted to their use, in the form of ex- 
position, illustration, collateral information and 
broad philosophic generalizations ! 

The philosophical mode of instruction, in what- 
ever form, is the only true one : as it is alone 
adapted to the wants of young inquiring minds, that 
need for their right inward growth principles rather 
than mere facts, which are always relatively super- 
abundant in their comprehension of things. On a 
thorough framework of principles, every other form 
and element of knowledge communicated or acquired 
can be laid up in its true place and for its true use. 
It is also necessary on the other hand that the 



162 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

student should be taught the practical habit of 
making constant application of all principles fur- 
nished him by his author or teacher, to the real 
utilities of life ; for principles like every thing else 
are valuable only for their uses. Some err in one 
of these directions : some in the other ; and many 
in both. 

There are three classes of studies which, from 
the special scope that they furnish for the full and 
yet varied use of the best resources and talents of 
an instruc'cor, deserve a distinct consideration here : 
history, science and language. 

Many rob each and all of these departments of 
instruction of very muoh of their profit and pleas- 
ure, by a slavish confinement to text-books. An 
author, in the hands of a true teacher, furnishes but 
a leading string, by which his pupils may direct 
their footsteps in the hour of study to a general 
acquaintance with the subject ; and which he may 
take up afterwards, in common with them, for their 
guidance to a better acquaintance with its treasures. 
The author is only therefore the teacher's servant ; 
and he who treats him as his master, establishes at 
once thereby his own utter disqualification for the 
high office that he has assumed. 

Some also, and generally without consciousness 
of the fact, teach the various knowledges, each as 
an end by itself, and not as a means to the end of 



THE TKUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 163 

all education : which is the proper development and 
equipment of the pupil, for achieving the greatest 
possible results for good, throughout all his life, to 
God and his fellow-men. It is astonishing indeed, 
how few living influences seem to exist in our foun- 
tains of education, where of all places upon earth 
they should surely most abound. The uses of edu- 
cation are multitudinous ; and all of the most vital 
practical kind ; and how can one who undertakes to 
dispense its blessings, think of aiming at any other 
object in all cases than the pupil's good ; or think- 
ing of that to some degree dole out his love in any 
stinted measure to him. A slow-paced, dull-eyed, 
effete teacher ! can any monstrosity among all God's 
works appear like this, to those who dwell in 
Heaven ! 

And is it not true also, that many undertake to 
teach others who themselves should be learners, not 
only of the first principles of so divine an employ- 
ment, but also of the very substance of the things 
themselves, that they teach. The idea has been 
quite common in the profession of education, and in 
this alone, that a man of slender 2jrej)aration might 
enter, at once, into even its highest offices and then 
qualify himself afterwards specifically for its details. 
And indeed the neglect and abuse with which this 
exalted vocation has been long visited by the mul- 
titude without, have been attributable to the wide- 



164 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

spread practical indifference manifested toward all 
its higher claims, by so many within its precincts. 

(1.) History is the most suggestive of all the 
great elements of instruction. It covers the whole 
field of human activity and experience, and fur- 
nishes endless materials for profitable thought and 
remark. Historical composition is itself one of the 
highest forms of literature, for both strength and 
beauty of style ; and from its wonderful combination 
of the means of mental excitement and information, 
with all the resources of argument, sentiment and 
taste, it appeals, beyond any other form of written 
thought, to the interest of the old alike and of the 
young, as well as of the learned and of the unlearn- 
ed. Standing on the high and broad platform of 
historical instruction, a teacher who is himself in- 
spired w^ith the love of it, can exert an exciting, 
elevating and controlling influence over his pupils, 
equalled nowhere else in his work, and spreading its 
rich benefits like an overflowing stream, over all 
their other studies and endeavors. The whole ad- 
ditional power of the lecturing system of teaching, 
should here be mingled in detail by the teacher 
with that of formal recitation by the student : both 
instructor and scholar mutually combining their 
interest and action in the recitation, as can be done 
nowhere else not even in the sciences, so well. Not 
Socrates nor Plato had nobler opportunities, for 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 165 

tlieir searching questions, or glowing disquisitions, or 
any of tlieir special modes of contact with, the 
minds of those who waited for knowledge at their 
lips. A man, whose mind can lie flat upon the field 
of historical vision and exploration, has in his nature 
an amount of stupidity which nothing can dis- 
turb, and to undertake to remove which would 
bring but little gain to its victim. 

The true study of history is one of the most im- 
portant, of all the appliances of a high educational 
system. If the foundations of a thorough acquaint- 
ance with its lessons are not laid in youth they 
never can be laid on any great scale, amid the cares 
and labors with which after-life is crowded. To be 
rightly pursued, it must be not merely read but 
studied. Slowly and repetitiously must its paths 
be traversed ; and carefully must its facts be col- 
lected. Haste will surely, here if anywhere, bring 
but scanty harvests. 

It has in its depths, like honey in the comb, a 
rich deposit of philosophy : the philosophy of human 
life, of the rise and fall of all greatness and of the 
causes and courses of failure and success in aU 
earthly undertakings. It is for their use in display- 
ing the real forms of human excellence and honor, 
directly as the principal figures to be seen : or in- 
directly, by some dark background serving to bring 
them into clearer relief, that all its pictures are so 



166 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

carefully drawn to tlie life. This inner sense of all 
tlie outward circumstance and show of so much re- 
corded action must he thoroughly seen, or the wide 
stream of the past will he made to flow before our 
eyes but in vain. God in history : this is the key 
to all its philosophy. As well might one think of 
comprehending a steam engine, by merely looking 
at it as a piece of wondrous mechanism, without 
knowing its adaptations and uses ; as of understand- 
ing any thing, beyond its mere surface, of the great 
organic past, without the perception of God's plans 
within and around all human events. History is, 
externally, an account of what man has done and 
undertaken to do ; but, internally, it is full of the 
bidden life of God's thoughts and feelings, restrain- 
ing, counterworking and directing the influences, 
that man has set in motion. It is therefore, like 
so many other things, double in the elements that 
compose it : being, on the one hand, the develop- 
ment of man's agency on man's part, and, on the 
other, of the great scheme of redemption on God's 
part, including in it his daily providence as well as 
the plans of his grace and the work of his spirit. 
Eightly taught therefore history, like nature, be- 
comes a grand volume of theology. The key to its 
secrets and its marvels is to be found, in the Jew- 
ish prophets ; and to such a wonderful degree, that 
prophecy might be defined to be, history written in 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 167 

advance, as history itself might also be called the 
prophets verified. 

(2.) In connection with history, instruction in 
science is one of the teacher's highest fields of labor. 
Here are many and open channels for the outflow 
of his strongest thoughts and feelings ; and abun- 
dant opportunities for accomplishing the highest in- 
tellectual and spiritual ends, at which he can aim. 
Science, like history, leads directly unto God. He 
who stops in teaching it at the mere outside fact 
or arrangement of facts presented, without inspect- 
ing its inward mechanism of adaptations, abases his 
own nature as well as that of his disciple ; for 
science is but man's collection of a few of the speci- 
mens of God's skilful provision for the activity 
comfort or improvement of mankind, in some of the 
physical, intellectual or moral aspects of his being. 
It is therefore the ever-present duty as it is the 
pleasure of the true educator in teaching science, 
to show, wherever he himself can see it, the con- 
triving hand of that great Mechanician, who, in 
building the universe or any part of it as the home 
of his intelligent creatures, purposely left its tracery 
of design open to their discovery, appreciation and 
grateful recognition. The sense of God's existence, 
and goodness, and watchfulness over all his creatures, 
can be nowhere obtained away from the closet, the 
secret place of his manifestation to the sons of 



168 THE TKUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

men, as among the open demonstrations of science ; 
wliere the revelation maide is as near that of vision, 
as is possible without it. 

In teaching science, reference must be had also 
by the instructor, at all times, to its practical uses. 
Every thing that has value upon earth derives it 
from its connection, in some way, with man ; and 
here is the value of science, in its ultimate uses. 
The tendency to divorce study and learning from 
the wants of every-day life, is neither divine nor 
human. The two grand terms of every thing on 
earth, and in the universe and so also of the whole 
universe itself, are God and man. From Grod to 
man, this is the direction of the scale : the secret 
alphabet of all the hieroglyphs of Time and of 
Eternity. 

Instruction in science in its higher forms and 
degrees, will, rightly conducted, establish in the 
diligent student such mental habits, especially, as 
quickness of perception, thoroughness in exploration, 
careful scrutiny, close penetrative analysis, exact 
method, and skill in analogical reasoning. At such 
results in his pupil's mind, baptized meanwhile with 
a deep religiousness of spirit, the true teacher will 
earnestly aim. Around each lesson in the text- 
book, as a nucleus, he will gather delightedly all 
his own stores of thought and treasures of feeling. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 169 

and lavish them upon his pupil, as his tribute of 
interest in the science and in him. 

Many, even Christian teachers, by a heathenish 
way of speaking of the facts of science, as the laws 
of nature, her preparations provisions and compen- 
sations, quite exclude Grod from His own universe 
in their instructions ; as if nature, which is but the 
jDroduct of his will, were herself God or had given 
birth to her own self, as an independent, self-origi- 
nated existence, in his creation. 

(3.) Eight instruction in language, also, in 
respect to the number to be influenced by it and its 
bearing on all the intellectual ends of education, is 
of very high importance. In what a dry and spirit- 
less manner is it however generally furnished ? 
Who could imagine, in looking at the languid air of 
many self-appointed teachers of the ancient lan- 
guages, and hearing the dull drawling recitations of 
their pupils, that in their slow movements as a 
company of drones, with heavy hands and steps and 
eyes, they were all the time passing through a land, 
full of odorous perfumes and gems and mountains of 
wealth. The true spirit of study in the depart- 
ment of language, sweeps with living energy, ovei 
many fields of deep enchanting interest, as grammar, 
prosody, specific and comparative etymology, an- 
tiquities, history, biography, geography and litera- 
ture, out of the materials of all of which the 



170 THE TEUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

accomplislied teacher can and will, in various com- 
binations, weave the web of liis daily instructions to 
his pupils. What a place of earnest strife can one, 
who is himself zealous, make a school-room to be, 
which is full of youthful linguists, not indeed of 
strife with each other for a selfish triumph, under 
the power of unholy ambition, but of conflict with 
ever new difficulties, each for himself ; which, like 
bold g,dventurers climbing up a moimtain's side with 
shoutings, they shall pass over in succession with 
exulting footsteps. 

In whatever department of instruction the true 
teacher is engaged, his conception of his relations to 
his pupils is ever the same, that, from his own 
spirit as a powerful battery, the whole life and 
character of the school are to be daily and momen- 
tarily derived. 

But look now at the true Christian teacher, in 
another department of his work. 

2dly. Government. 

This is one of the highest of arts ; and natural 
genius for it is as shining a gift from God, as inborn 
capacity for any other lofty style of action. The 
faculty, when native to a high degree, involves in its 
exercise a full and quick comprehension of human 
nature in any of its forms, an immediate intuition 
of the demands of every crisis, facility in making 
provision for them, and alertness in mental action, 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 171 

as well as a natural sense of the beauty of order and 
a natural force of will ; which, combined, make it as 
easy to govern as to think or act in any other 
direction. In discussing this part of the subject, I 
shall consider the general style of management 
wlych the teacher should adopt toward his pupils ; 
and yet management is not the word that will 
rightly figure to all minds the full orb of our idea : 
as so often, in other things, it implies a mixture of 
craft and cunning. If we call it treatment, the 
phrase will have perhaps too much of a medical 
savor about it, and call up thoughts of the student 
as a patient, if not even as a victim : a conception, 
which, as there is so much traditionary nonsense in 
common speech and in some of our best literature, 
about study as a task and school-boy days as days 
of sour experience, we are over-willing to avoid. 
Let us call it then the high and skilful ordering of 
all those influences which serve to arouse, determine 
and prosper, in every form and at all times, the 
whole activity of his whole nature ; or in other 
words the full, designed outlay of the teacher's 
labor, tact, art, taste, genius, strength and time for 
the greatest possible enlargement and refinement of 
all that constitutes the real manhood of the pupil. 
So much of this part of the subject as belongs, 
strictly, to either of the specific topics of personal 



172 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

influence or direct religious effort, will be reserved 
for subsequent consideration. 

§ 1. The general discipline of the higlier Chris- 
tian education must be exact. In its realm of toil, 
Law must sit, although unseen herself, upon a 
throne of light and wave her silent sceptre over 
willing happy hearts : law, that great invisible 
abstraction born of reason and the conscience, which 
pervades, like God himself, all the works of his 
hands with its mighty presence. If in military 
tactics, in order to secure power of motion and 
action in the body, such attention must be given 
with long and constant repetition, to the procure- 
ment of entire subordination to authority, manly 
endurance, regularity, precision and swiftness of 
movement, and all the other elements of effective 
warfare : if, to accomplish by mechanical agency 
any great material results in regard to either force 
or finish, spring and valve and wheel and cog must 
all be made to play with absolute certainty of time 
and strength, each in its proper place, and all the 
more silently all the more beautifully ; how much 
more, in the higher sphere of great intellectual 
effects, must order reign : order, not of that nega- 
tive spiritless form which is the mere absence of 
disorder, the order of a desert ; but that sublime 
marshalling of active forces to a grand unity of 
results, which, while it brings out of them the 



THE TRUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. iVS 

highest possible advantage, requires in him who 
thus undertakes to harmonize their agency to so 
productive an issue, the greatest possible use of 
skilful and watchful energy. Such a style of order 
has a momentum in it, a ground-swell, that bears 
forward every thing else that rests upon it. The 
quality of the discipline to be found in our schools 
and colleges, is not often what it should be, to meet 
either the demands of Christianity or those of the 
age. If the potency and preciousness of the volun- 
tary system of public life and manners, and so of the 
entire democratic framework of society, be what 
they are claimed to be, the nearest possible approxi- 
mation to a perfect social state, then, properly, the 
fact should be quite manifest in not only the relative 
but also the absolute superiority of our educational 
institutions and appliances. But is it not true that 
in multitudes of instances there is not as much 
order secured, or attempted to be secured, in refer- 
ence to the high ends of mental and moral training, 
as the general government readily obtains of its 
sailors and soldiers ; or a mercantile house of its 
clerks ; or a manufacturing company of its opera- 
tives ? The reproach so often uttered abroad 
against American democracy and Christianity alike, 
that they fail to sustain before the bar of the world's 
judgment, their claims to superior excellence, on one 
of the most important of all test-points, the home — 



174 THE TKUE CHKISTIAN TEACHEK. 

and school — education of the young in respect to 
their intellects^ morals and manners, is surely too 
well founded to be either denied or excused. And 
yet, in the real type and, spirit of our institutions., 
civil and religious, fully developed and employed, 
there are capabilities for attaining great results, that 
no part of monarchical Europe, however cultivated, 
ever has possessed or can possess. Their discipline of 
the school, like that of the state, is the discipline 
of physical necessity and of fear : outward in its 
bearings rather than inward, mechanical rather than 
personal in its spirit : that of compulsory requisition, 
rather than that of stimulated self-respect and well- 
acquired self-government. Whatever results are 
obtained, are gained under the pressure of the doc- 
trine, that might makes right ; while under our 
system of government, religion and education, the 
opposite sentiment flames forth everywhere, as our 
guiding star, that right makes might. And although 
the working of such a system of influences, where 
ideas are the tools to be used and each mind is to 
be made a law unto itself, involves much more labor 
than the little effort required to bring the wheels of 
previously organized social machinery to bear on a 
given point at hand, yet the toil is well spent, as 
the product is of so much greater value ; and the 
observance of the universal rule of heaven and earth, 
that the more valuable the result, the higher and 



THE TKUE CHEISTIAN TEACHEK. 175 

harder we must climb to get it, will always bring 
with it its own reward. To establish in any one 
habits of self-respect, high ideals of personal char- 
acter, lofty aims and aspirations, and the deep true 
elements of all manliness and godliness, which are 
rather one than two : being the same state of heart 
as manifested variously on its under and its upper 
side : is a work worthy of an angel's hand. 

§ 2. The discipline of the higher Christian edu- 
cation, must also be genial. The youthful mind is 
as has been said remarkably responsive to sympathy 
and appreciation. He who makes much of a pupil's 
excellences and little of his faults ; who, forgetful 
of the past, is always summoning him cheerfully and 
inspiringly to new aims and efforts, exerts an almost 
magical influence over him for his good. Alas ! 
how ungenial are most teachers towards their 
pupils : interpreting them and their conduct from 
the stand-point of selfish feeling, and ever fretting 
their own thoughts with a pitiful sense of the self- 
denial, required in their noble calling ; instead of 
becoming elastic and heroic and mighty in their 
work, from a cherished sense of its value, if rightly 
executed, unto their pupils. A selfish, materialis- 
tic, worldly-minded teacher of youth is as great an 
object of pity, or rather of contempt, as can be found 
in this lower world. He, on the contrary, who acts 
in such a way as to deserve at all times the respect 



176 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER, 

and affection of each pupil, yea ! ratlier his imita- 
tion also, is a giant in his position. He is not in- 
deed himself above law : as no one in the universe is, 
not even the Great Divine Being, the very effluence 
of w^hose thoughts and feelings is all according to 
the law of love ; but he is the law itself imper- 
sonated. 

There is wonderful profit and power to the 
teacher in the habit of treating his pupils at all 
times, with the same consideration in kind, with 
which the intercourse of older persons is stimulated 
and gladdened, in cultivated society. Childhood is 
remarkably susceptible to all such kindly influences. 
Polite attentions from a superior in age and attain- 
ments combined have a wonderful charm to them ; 
as to men of low estate, similarly, the gentle con- 
descension of those who are greatly superior is so 
delightful. Even pleasant, sympathetic playfulness 
with them will open the way, effectually, to almost 
every other influence upon their hearts. It grieves 
one to say, as it does so many to see, that in some 
if not most of our colleges, there is such an amount of 
cold formalism of management and manner, on the 
part of those whose hearts should be all aglow with 
the most intense interest in the young minds, di- 
vorced from the strong constraints of home on pur- 
pose to obtain the greater benefit of their teachers' 
company, example and guidance, that not only in 



THE TKUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 177 

college but through all their subsequent life, so 
many speak to each other of their college- teachers, 
as men to whom they feel no personal attachment 
or even indebtedness, and whom they always avoid 
or at best fear, rather than love. But if anywhere 
in the world the place or the occasion can be found, 
in which one may naturally and successfully oc- 
cupy, instead of the parent, his very position, both 
in his own thoughts of his adopted relationship to 
his pupil and in his hearty reception by him as " his 
next friend " on earth, it is in the holy work of edu- 
cation, yes ! holy, in which all the privileges and 
powers of all other offices of trust and honor among 
men, are united in one. 

The two great component elements spoken of 
above, are, as already mentioned, those of all true 
government at home or at school, in the state or in 
the church, on earth or in heaven : complete scien- 
tific strictness of principle and plan, mingled with 
real personal kindness. The beautiful definition in 
the Scriptures of proper spiritual labor for others, in 
the work of the gospel, " speaking the truth in love," 
would*be, if duplicated to both speaking and acting 
it, an exact description in a word, of the high art 
of all worthy intercourse in any form with each one 
of them. Justice and mercy : these are the two 
chief attributes of the Deity, for wonder in himself 
and for their productiveness of aU things great and 



178 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER, 

good to his creatures ; and they are the two highest 
manifestations of humanity. To combine them in 
full proportion ; to know when to be firm and when 
to yield ; to carry the conscience of the pupil in its 
full strength of judgment and feeling always with 
you, so that your acts shall be at all times but the 
voice indeed of his own deepest unuttered thoughtb : 
this is an endeavor in accomplishing which every 
faculty can find full play ; and every resource of 
one's whole vast complex nature, can be brought 
into complete employment. 

At the bottom of all other attempts for the 
right training of the young, lies the careful forma- 
tion of thorough habits of industry. Activity, con- 
stant, true, mental and moral activity is, as really, 
one of the great primary laws of life in the soul, as 
breathing in the body. An unemployed mind, or 
one employed but feebly and partially, is not in a 
state in which any high growths of thought and 
feeling can be planted and prosper. As well might 
one expect to display in rich abundance the fruits 
and flowers of a luxuriant garden, on hard unbroken 
ground. If necessity is the mother of inventions, 
certainly industry is still more the mother of vir- 
tues. The requirement of lofty, vigorous, sustained 
effort the student's conscience will always sanction, 
as right ; and if led to it with no more even than 
ordinary tact and earnestness, as well as required to 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 179 

undertake it, he will show at once in his looks and 
words and deeds, how well he understands that at 
last he has found the proper element in which, like 
a bird in the air or a fish in the sea, he feels that 
every thing around is strangely adapted to him, and 
he is as strangely adapted to it. 

In arrangements, requirements and appeals, 
directed to the constant procurement of earnest ap- 
plication by the student, lies not only the best but 
also the only preparation in his mind for the ad- 
ministration of true discipline over him. So far as 
the teacher is concerned what he specially needs, 
over and above the qualifications already mentioned, 
without which indeed he is disqualified for any part 
of his business, as love to his work, to his pupils and 
to his Master, is tact. Small is the word, it is 
true ; but great is its meaning. It is one of those 
few words that are almost undefinable : their sense 
is so varied in varying circumstances. Those apt 
movements and happy hits and quick inventions, 
which characterize real tact, make it seem more like 
a sort of luck alive, than any thing else : they in- 
volve in them such a fine mixture of good sense and 
good feeling and of shrewdness, as well as alertness 
of mind. If also the Teacher combines with abun- 
dance of tact abundance likewise of bright glowing 
cheerfulness and even of warm playful mother-wit : 
so that all the most quick responsive susceptibilities 



180 THE TRUE CHEISTIAISr TEACHEE. 

of the pupil's heart are perpetually stirred and 
swayed by his magical influence : he moves about 
as a governor bearing divine insignia of office, among 
the happy hearts that perpetually obey him, with- 
out ever thinking of the reason why, and seem to 
themselves to do by instinct without requirement, 
all the time, exactly what they know that he would 
have them do. 

One of the chief points of tact, in the govern- 
ment of a school, is to keep always in motion, as an 
offset to the ever-present working of depravity in 
each heart, a thorough system of anticipative and 
preventive influences. To break the certain force 
of temptations, by ingeniously excluding them : to 
ward off the occurrence of junctures and crises in 
one's work : to so occupy the pupil's heart with the 
high aims and enjoyments of earnest self-improve- 
ment, that the fiery darts of the tempter shall at 
once be extinguished, as if falling into the tide of a 
deep strong stream, the moment th^t they reach 
him : this is tact, that is worthy of the noblest in- 
tellect. One of the most desirable of all feelings, 
that the teacher can possibly create in each pupil's 
mind, in undertaking to work effectually such a 
high preventive system of influences, is that which 
may be called a sense of his personal ubiquity. 
Real or supposed publicity is a wonderful damper to 
wrong action, in one who has a character to keep or 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 181 

make. And far-sighted plans, quick movements of 
body and mind and clear intuitions, with strong ex- 
ecutive energy, are as valuable qualities in the 
school-room as in the battle-field. Military general- 
ship is, indeed, when of a high order, as is states- 
manship, raox^ akin in the assemblage of qualities 
which it includes, to those required to be united in 
the true mastership of a school, than any other form 
of governmental administration. 

One of the highest sources, and indeed forms, 
of tact in a Teacher consists in what may be 
called, talent in reading character. Some, although 
otherwise competent, are disqualified almost entirely 
for entering on this noble profession, at least with 
any high success, because of their want of intuitive- 
ness in interpreting character. While having out- 
ward eyes, they are from inward blindness like per- 
sons of imperfect vision, in the management of the 
young, whose personal inability to comprehend at a 
glance all their movements perpetually tempts 
those over whom they are placed to practise all 
kinds of dupery little and great upon them. But 
keen-eyed perception of character, when combined 
with unsuspicious openness of conduct and prompt 
executive habits of action, gives a teacher a felt 
position, one felt by his pupils as well as by himself, 
of almost unlimited j)ower over them. 

Another of the special kinds of tact displayed 



182 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

by tlie true Teaclier, is seen in his subsequent treat- 
ment of the erring. Like his own Master on high, 
he is royal in forgiving and forgetting all past 
offences, if he can only see a new spirit for the 
future ; and this he is constantly seeking in every 
way to originate and cherish. Forgive means to 
give away or put away out of sight : so, he strives 
like God to " remember their transgressions no 
more " : " he upbraids not " ; but ever keeps the 
way wide open, for one who has in any manner lost 
his position with him or with the school, to re- 
gain it. 

Many make rules, for their selfish ease, in the 
school-room, which if God were to make for this 
w'orld would empty it at once of all its inhabitants : 
they will receive or keep only those who are ex- 
emplary at the outset. The cure for the undevel- 
oped or wayward with them is, expulsion, not refor- 
mation ; because it costs patience, skill, time and 
prayer to work effectually on such untoward mate- 
rials. But the genius and the glory of Christianity, 
whether its energies are employed by God or man, 
consist in its power to renew and elevate those who 
need its full renovating influence upon them. No 
greater pleasure on earth belongs to the heritage of 
a faithful earnest Christian teacher, than that of an 
entire and lasting remodelling of the habits and 
purposes of those, who before went astray. The 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 183 

school, like the church, is after all a moral hospital, 
where all kinds of infirmities and evils must be ex- 
pected and brought under skilful curative treat- 
ment. 

In connection with these aims and characteris- 
tics and kinds of tact, the earnest Christian teacher, 
who fears God and loves man and feels the pressure 
of " the powers of the world to come " upon his 
heart, will give effect to all his requirements and 
plans and varied forms of tact and all the many- 
kinds of -moral influence which he may employ, by 
the use of the rod when necessary. But how differ- 
ent in meaning and in effect, will his use of physi- 
cal appliances for the good of his pupil be, when 
originating from such views and pervaded by them, 
from that of him, who is fitful in his plans and pas- 
sionate in his feelings ! The true Christian Teacher 
punishes corporeally, only as a last resort : he 
punishes because he must, or else must let his pupil 
go on unchecked to ruin. Alone with him, he talks 
in earnest loving tones about his delinquencies and 
their fearful results ; tells him of his own love for 
him and much more of God's ; urges him to a new 
style of effort for the future ; and then punishes 
him because he must as his true friend, and punish- 
ing him on principle does it thoroughly : every 
stroke of the rod from him being answered by a 



184 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

corresponding stroke within, from the conscience of 
the culprit upon himself. 

The government of a good school is so good in 
itself and in the apprehension of those dwelling 
happily under it, that, like that of our own peace- 
ful democratic government, no one has any reason 
for desiring to change it : every thought of diso- 
bedience or even restiveness under it is forestalled 
by its own perpetual pleasurableness. The sun- 
shine of universal satisfaction is spread everywhere 
around. 

Another of the principal modes of labor opening 
before the true Teacher at all times, is 

3dly. That of personal influence. 

This is in all men of two kinds, unconscious and 
designed. The greatest influence which any man 
exerts upon others, is that of which he is insensible : 
it is so all-penetrating and all-surrounding like the 
very atmosphere, in its action upon them, when 
they are in contact with him or even in his presence. 
It is the influence of character, of one soul directly 
upon another ; exhaled in the breath ; streaming 
through the eyes ; and animating every motion ; 
rising up out of the deep and secret fountains of the 
heart ; and finding its way through the most subtle 
and invisible channels, into the hidden recesses of 
others' being. Well does the very word character, 
which is but the Greek X'^'P^'^'^W anglicized, ex- 



THE TKUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 185 

press the fact described. It means alike a graver 
and the thing engraved. Character has in it the 
fixedness of a stamp itself and the power of a stamp 
on others. Althous^h life and death are in the 
power of the tongue, yet actions speak louder than 
words. The power of example is greater than the 
power of speech. No energy reveals itself, whether 
in repose or in action, so instantaneously as char- 
acter ; and not more quickly is the eye sensitive to 
light, than is our whole being responsive in every 
part, to its influence. Who does not feel at once, 
that in the days of Washington or Napoleon a 
speech, welling up with a full overflow of thought 
and feeling from their hearts, would have a far 
different effect upon their soldiers, and ought to 
have, than the same speech containing the same 
good sense and earnest apj)eals if made by a sub- 
ordinate would exert. Every act of a great man is 
ennobled by the elevation of his position. What 
is overlooked as common in others is watched and 
studied, as of special interest in him. His table- 
talk is reported ; his correspondence published ; 
his manuscripts and even his signatures are bought 
and sold ; his favorite haunts are visited ; and his 
intimate friends are looked at with admiration, as 
children walk about with a soldier to stare at him. 
And so, words of counsel and encouragement from 
a friend, compared with those which are just as true 



186 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

and wise and precious in themselves from others, 
are hke luscious fruit plucked ripe and fresh from 
their native tree, compared with the same fruit 
when dry and stale from heat or age. 

As face answereth to face, so does the heart of 
man to man. This is true, not only of the natural 
likeness of men in body and soul to each other, 
wherever found ; but also of the" influence of man 
upon man, face upon face and heart upon heart, as 
of the sun on the earth or the moon on the sea. 
This is the great, unappreciated, unconscious influ- 
ence exerted by every man, of which the Bible 
speaks in the declaration, that we are epistles known 
and read of all men, and in the command to let our 
light shine, so that others may see our good works. 
If now the teacher, as he moves among his schol- 
ars, can always appear to them clad, as in a vest- 
ment of light, with bright and pleasing associations : 
full of the sweet majesty of thought and love : 
bearing in his face the image of Heaven ; and him- 
self the very exemplar to their conceptions of all 
that they themselves would fain be ; how will all his 
nnuttered wishes become at once loud-voiced com- 
mands to them, and his secret feelings find deliver- 
ance in their happy pursuit of the ends which he 
seeks and sets also before them, for their attain- 
ment ! The heart of a child has been naturally 
prepared by its Maker for just this willing captivity 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 187 

to those who are appointed to train it : in the gen- 
eral simplicity of its feelings, its easy trustfulness, 
and the conception, so universal with children, that 
their teachers are of vast attainments and infallible 
in their decisions : a mistake better made for its 
influence on the young than unmade ; and while 
innocent in all its bearings upon the objects, towards 
whom it is extended, it is yet capable of being em- 
ployed by an enthusiastic teacher, with the high- 
est stimulating effect upon the young themselves. 
Confidence is as necessary in the mutual relations 
of teacher and pupil, as in the monetary world be- 
tween the borrower and the lender ; or, in the 
household, between husband and wife, parent and 
child. Nothing but the direct abuse of this high- 
est privilege of his position by the teacher can pre- 
vent him from leading them as he will. 

As for designed personal influence, as well as 
that which is unconscious, there is wonderful scope 
in the teacher's work, for all possible ingenuity and 
faithfulness in its exercise. " Study to show thy- 
self approved : a workman, that needeth not to be 
ashamed : " this is the sentence written by the fin- 
ger of God, which he must write for himself upon 
his own banners, as he leads on his pupils to glory, 
honor and virtue. Certainly one engaged in an 
employment, in which he is to touch perpetually so 
many living springs, of character, fortune and fate, 



188 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN TEACHER. 

in all that he does and all that he leaves undone, 
can afford to study well the bearings of every move- 
ment which he originates ; and to combine in the 
practical conduct of his plans the results of all the 
thought, experience, science, art, enterprise and 
religion, which he can possibly blend together. 
The only way in which to appear to be good, is ac- 
tually to be so ; and of all forms of goodness that is 
of the highest and most enduring power and beauty, 
which flows forth in a full stream from a cultivated 
and commanding intellect. 

A man, besides, can do almost any thing in this 
world, who sets earnestly about it. The positive 
qualities which characterize an earnest nature, its 
determination, hopefulness and daring in various 
degrees and mixtures, according to the duties and 
emergencies that it is to meet, are among the speci- 
mens of human character that every man admires 
most, in every other man. Hence the strange elec- 
trifying power of boldness, whether in opposing or 
leading men. • The earnest men are so few in the 
woiid, that their very earnestness becomes at once 
the badge of their nobility ; and as men in a crowd 
instinctively make room for one, who seems eager to 
force his way through it ; so mankind everywhere 
open their ranks to one who rushes zealously toward 
some object lying beyond them. 

Next to the great constraining power of the 



THE TRUE CHEISTIAN TEACHEE. 189 

teacher's personal example of goodness in every 
form, and that of his manifest personal love to the 
pupil, there is no influence that he can exert for his 
good, like that of frequent earnest conversation 
clear and full and warm with him, about all points 
of danger or duty, and every thing pertaining to 
his regression or progression, in his course. 

But there is still another mode of labor, in 
which the true Christian teacher is ever glad to em- 
ploy his skill. 

4thly. Direct religious effort. 

He feels in teaching youth, even his own chil- 
dren, that they are all God's children and not his 
or man's, but placed by his Father in heaven, sol- 
emnly and lovingly, under his care to be trained 
for Him. A company of his pupils, therefore, al- 
ways stands before him as a company of immortals, 
in whose very features he seems to read these words, 
in lines of light : these are from God ; and let them 
be to God. 

Eeligion is most truly presented to mankind, in 
any department of life or action, when made the 
living in-working principle of every thought and 
plan and movement in it : like the light, revealing 
itself by revealing every thing else in its true colors 
and proportions. In the very act of separating re- 
ligion from the business and pleasures of life, as 



190 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

if a mere doctrine or form or institution or con- 
venience, " its occupation is gone." 

But wliile religion should transfuse its deep 
sweet light, through, not only the whole character, 
but also through all the minutest parts of the en- 
tire work of the teacher, as the great ever-present 
source of all his ideas, feelings, words and deeds ; 
there should he also direct specific eifort made for 
the conversion and sanctification of each pupil. Is 
God a God of law, in things material, mechanical, 
agricultural, commercial and intellectual ; then, 
how much more in those highest of all relations, 
for which these others are appointed ! A man who 
strives rightly for the overthrow of Satan's king- 
dom anywhere, and most of all among the young, 
may lahor justly with more hope and assurance of 
the result desired, than he who furrows the ground 
and sprinkles it with seed and prays for the early 
and the latter rain : as the interests involved in his 
toil are, in themselves, so much more precious on 
the one hand, and so much dearer on the other to 
God himself 

Eeligion is seldom presented to the young, in its 
true light : as a glorious privilege, a delightful 
treasure and a source of perpetual gladness. All 
the cheerful, hopeful, buoyant instincts of childhood 
are purposely set by their Maker, so as in their 
right use to appreciate and crave the beauty of His 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 191 

works and of himself and of a religion, so full of all 
ministries of peace and pleasure to its intelligent 
possessor. But how is our great good Father above 
made to aj)pear distant and cold and forbidding to 
the young ! and how is love to him spoken of as a 
mere duty ! and how are all its most precious quick- 
ening truths converted into a mass of bare, porten- 
tous doctrines to their apprehension ! 

It is manifest therefore in what way a school or 
a college is to get and to keep a deservedly high 
reputation. Its only policy should be the policy of- 
absolute merit. With simple reliance upon God 
alone, its whole effort should be to erect a lofty pile 
of good deeds in its work upon the earth : such as 
the great Judge himself shall pronounce to be good. 
The highest scrutiny for which one can prepare 
himself, the only one of which he should have any 
apprehension, is God's. Not he that commendeth 
himself is approved, but whom the Lord commend- 
eth, and they who seek not the honor wliich comes 
from God only can be accepted of Him neither in 
their faith nor in their works. The idea is quite 
common, not only in matters of business, politics 
and fashion, but also of education and religion, that 
there is after all some pathway of success beyond 
and beside that of striving in all things to please 
God. Would not Christ, were He to appear on 
earth again, say everywhere now with sadness, as 



192 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

when He was here, Oh ye of little faith ! and with 
the same intense irony as then, " when the son of 
Man Cometh shall he find faith on the earth ? " 
The mass of men still expect to prosper best, with- 
out God. They do not believe in his providence 
over them, or in his presence among them. And 
how is that sweet conception of him, as a Father : 
the brightest and best of all the thoughts, that can 
ever be taken into the human heart, and breathe 
out its perfume there : utterly lost to them, as if 
they had no inner sense to which its beauty could 
be revealed ! 

Nothing can take the place in the management 
of our educational institutions and appliances, one 
and all, of work : honest, earnest, skilful, constant 
work. How contemptible is reliance, in the place 
of such work, on public examinations, for which to 
the' neglect of all scientific treatment of his real 
interests, the student is so often stufied and crammed 
with zeal, only for the sake of the desired result to 
the institution, instead of any absolute profit to 
him, who is in fact sacrificed himself while being 
carefully tricked for show to others ! The object is 
to make capital of him for the future benefit of the 
institution, instead of developing him perpetually, 
to the highest degree possible, as a thinking active 
being of many and great natural faculties and re- 
sources. Public exhibitions also are, on the same 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 193 

principle, quite in vogue in many places ; in which 
handsome declamation, prepared by mere imitative 
drill, and compositions, abundantly interlined, en- 
larged and adorned with all sorts of superadded ex- 
cellences by zealous teachers, are prepared for the 
glorification of the institution and its officers, in the 
eyes of superficial observers : which yet are all 
shams, since they do not indicate at all the real 
mental condition of the pupil, and since therefore 
he could not, if left to himself, produce any such 
speech or composition again. Skill in composition 
is one of the last attainments of an educated mind ; 
and, therefore, when it appears in early youth, be- 
trays at once its foreign origin. 

The results of true teaching will be those of 
high advancement to every pupil, individually, of 
whatever style of disposition or grade of character, 
that comes under its influence. In no employment 
is there greater versatility, in fact, in the objects 
and ends of the toil expended ; and in none is a 
more varied and elastic style of adaptation to those 
ends demanded. A true teacher never settles down 
upon average modes of dealing with his pupils. 
Such men, and they are numerous in all kinds of 
business, are themselves but average-men. Often, 
if not well-nigh always, the medium-grade of tal- 
ents and attainments is selected, both at school 
and at college, as the uniform gauge for the amount 
9 



194 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER, 

of toil and rate of progress appointed for all. 
Those, accordingly, of maximum -power : made of 
God to be the very ornaments of the institution, as 
in after-life of society itself : are either left to the 
waywardness of their own untutored impulses, or, 
while being open at more points of their nature to 
assault than others, are exposed by utter neglect of 
their special wants, as if on system, to evil influ- 
ences tending powerfully to disorganize all the in- 
ward elements of their mental and moral vitality. 
Those of minimum-force of mind, who need to be 
aroused and cheered and inspired, rather, than like 
the preceding, to be provided with adequate work 
and to be guided skilfully and earnestly into proper 
directions, for variety of eifort and height of achieve- 
ment : these are abandoned, on the cold and heart- 
less plea of necessity, to their own habitual self-dis- 
couragement. The same requisitions are made of 
them as are made of others, whom God has made 
capable of doing much more than they. 

It may be, in some respects, convenient for self- 
ish minds, to equalize their work, and so make it 
mechanical instead of artistic, by resorting to short- 
hand processes, and doing things by average. But 
is it right ? A school should be so conducted, that 
no one in it is ever at a loss to know, what to do 
next, and no one ever ceases to feel, that he is un- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 195 

der the pressure of immediate necessity and of im- 
mediate obligation. 

Perpetual effort should be the ever-present rule 
of action for each : eifort for such things as each 
severally needs ; and perpetual victory should be 
the happy history of one and all. It is the rule in 
God's kingdom that " of those to whom much has 
been given shall be much required ; " and the rule 
really enforced by the true Christian teacher, if not 
always observed and watched by the pupil in its 
workings, will be the same. One of abilities de- 
cidedly superior to the others, should for example 
not only recite in three or four lessons, as Latin, 
Greek and Mathematics, &c,, like the rest of those 
with whom he is otherwise wrongly classified ; but 
in another recitation also, with another class pur- 
suing some high English study or some Modern 
Language. There is no difficulty in working such 
a varied system of appliances and demands, according 
to the varied talents of the pupils, on a large and 
free scale, and with great pleasure and profit to both 
teacher and pupil. It is impossible to see how one 
can do his daily work without it, so as to satisfy either 
any high ideas of educational art or of educational 
duty. Those whom God has made leaders in mind, 
should be so developed at school and at home as to 
fulfil their destiny, from the very first, among their 
associates youn^ or old. Their endowments have 



196 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

not come by chance from God, and it is left for 
men to say that they shall not be in vain. But 
how are boys of genius everywhere sacrificed both 
at home and at school by foolish flattery, by weak, 
blind, educational treatment and even by such piti- 
ful theories, as, that smart children must be held 
back lest they die before their time, and that genius 
will carve its own way without the necessity of 
much early discipline, or of much toil in subsequent 
life. As the world goes, it is about as unfortunate, 
with here and there a noble exception, for a youth 
to possess native genius, as for one of the other sex 
to be gifted with great physical beauty. By posi- 
tive abuse on the one hand, and by under-develop- 
ment on the other, he never acquires or early loses 
the spirit of work and all zeal for mental progress 
and becomes, instead, the victim of a ruinous spirit 
of self-conceit, destructive of all thoughts of toil, 
all intellectual conquests, all usefulness and all real 
benevolence. The atmosphere of a true educa- 
tional establishment should be and will be genial 
and tropical : exactly adapted to force onwards all 
high growths. Every thing good will break out in 
it into larger fulness of life : what is great will 
become greater ; while every thing evil in it will 
be subordinated and mellowed and under the accom- 
panying dews of divine grace changed into forms of 
varied beauty and excellence. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 197 

It is riglit for parents and guardians to expect 
great and continued improvement in their sons and 
wards, at school and at college. They should ex- 
pect more than they do ; and the higher the class of 
institution, the more should they expect and claim. 
Here, certainly, is not only a fair field for close, vig- 
ilant, perpetual scrutiny ; but it is demanded by 
the real interests of all parties. Both pupils and 
teachers should be made to feel, that they are sur- 
rounded by a multitude of eyes, burning with in- 
tense interest in what they do. 

Such characteristics as these should begin to 
show themselves at once, and in ever enlarging de- 
grees of strength and beauty, in each pupil : a new 
sense of order and a new love for it ; a new spirit of 
work ; higher aims and purposes and plans ; loftier 
ideals of attainment ; increase in daily happiness ; 
and greater refinement of feeling, both as a matter 
of artistic sentiment, and of a deeper moral sense. 
The nobler the style of boy by nature, the more 
should such intellectual and moral fruitage be re- 
quired, and the more regularly under true educational 
culture ; while the more backward is any pupil, the 
more should we secretly pity him and labor patiently 
and continually for his advancement : regarding his 
backwardness, as in nearly every case it accords with 
the truth to do, as the result of voluntary, although 
unconscious torpidity of mind on his part : a dul- 



198 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER. 

ness self-imposed by a "will hitherto nnawakened, 
because hitherto "unsolicited or impressed to work ; 
or of early abuse, stifling its first beginnings of 
growth, by ridicule, or neglect, or at least want of 
earnest, loving kindness and care in some form. 

But how different from the views here expressed, 
are those represented in the current style of educa- 
tion ! According to these it is of no advantage to 
the world, that there are different orders of talent 
among youth, and that young giants appear among 
them in advance, as among men in the higher em- 
ployments of life. It is as if one were called to 
train a multitude of quadrupeds theoretically for 
their own best development, and, instead of adapt- 
ing the style of education assumed, to the size 
strength and capacities of each, he were to put all, 
of whatever stature or form, into one style of 
harness, and to require of all, of whatever step or 
gait, one uniform style of movements. Is it any 
wonder, that so many feel utterly disgusted with 
the prevailing modes of instruction of whatever 
name, as well as with their results ; while others 
laugh at the whole thing as a pitiable though osten- 
tatious farce. 

Does any one in conclusion ask, what is to en- 
courage and sustain a teacher, of the highest aims 
and efforts, in his career of constant, noble toil ? 
Faith in God ! this, and this alone ! Leaning on 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN TEACHER, 199 

this staff, given to liim from above, lie can walk 
triumphantly, through flood and tire, onward and 
upward, in abounding usefulness. The one man in 
modern society, little as he may be so recognized, 
that combines in his own person the offices of the 
prophet, the priest and the king of ancient days, is 
such a teacher, walking 'with Grod, and ever looking 
up to him, and working for him with all his might 
of body and of soul. 



IV. 

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 



lY. 

THE TKUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

The word school, Greek a-^oXr]^ meaning leis- 
ure, repeats itself, under various euphonic modifi- 
cations, in all the languages of the civilized world. 
And leisure it is, or freedom from manual labor, that 
those devoted to learning enjoy ; and freedom, not 
only from the mere care of the body, which makes 
life to most men such a series of burdens, but also 
from a multitude of other dusty experiences, con- 
nected with a material and sensual heritage of the 
world. The classic sense of the word, as of the 
word scholar, had reference to adults : to those who 
gathered, from principles of elective affinity, around 
the great inquirers and reasoners of elder days. The 
Latin word, Indus, which was also used like schola 
to denote a school, and which does not seem to have 
been transferred to any other language, signifies 
sport, games, strife : presenting the idea of a gym- 
nasium, where earnest combatants struggled with 
each other for the mastery. The "contentio cor- 
poris " of the one corresponded to the " contentio 



204 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

animi" of the other. The view of the scholar's 
life in the one "word is objective ; while in the other 
it is subjective. 

The name scholar has ever been a name of honor 
in the world, and he who has been worthy to bear 
it has been sure of respect in all ages and countries. 
The priests who ruled in the inner world of faith, in 
the first beginnings of historic development, as 
among the ancient Egyptians and the Celts, were 
the scholars of those times. The thinkers, who, in 
after ages in Greece and Eome, kept open court in 
the temple of reason for crowds of admiring attend- 
ants, and sent forth from their secret place of power 
all the vital influences and energies that originated 
within the bosom of society in their day, were the 
men of thoroughly trained habits of mind : the men 
of vast scholarly powers of exploration and discovery, 
for their age, in the realms of truth, How much of the 
intellectual history of Greece, full of all great things 
as was the stream, flowed forth from the fountains 
of thought in Plato's and Aristotle's heart ! Schol- 
ars were often, in those days of thunderous strife, 
appointed also to muster the hosts of war. Pericles, 
Demosthenes, Thucydides and Xenophon, Cicero 
and Cassar, were all generals. 

The structure of ancient humanity was reared 
on the basis of physical strength and martial bra- 
very. Giants, heroes, chieftains and kings then 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 205 

ruled the world. Modern society, so far as it is 
normal and Christian in its type, is all upreared on 
the great doctrine of right, not might : a mental 
and moral basis. Thought not force now holds the 
sceptre. The paraphernalia of power and its blazon- 
ry are put away out of sight, or gazed at, wherever 
they are found, only as the tawdry relics of the past. 
Power itself is latent, like the great invisible forces 
of nature, but all the more real and mighty. Schol- 
ars are the nobles that now walk the world, without 
indeed any regalia, but bearing the stamp of Di- 
vinity upon their brow. The aristocracy of mind is the 
only aristocracy, that envious Time cannot destroy. 
The common classes once everywhere looked 
askance at men of study and learning, as those, 
who, in lacking stout, hard hands like themselves, 
were thought to have of necessity but weak heads : 
being regarded but as accomplished drones, who were 
willing to see others gather the honey of life, that 
they might dwell in ease and consume it. But ed- 
ucated men have so evidently carved out all the fea- 
tures of modern society, and led the nations forward, 
step by step, on the great highway of human prog- 
ress, that every mouth is now silent against them 
from conviction. The study, the laboratory, the 
office, are the places where the modern rulers of the 
world sit in state. And yet, strange to say, the 
school, the great original fountain of all tlie educa- 



206 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

tion of the age, the spot whence its quickening in- 
fluences all flow, is practically regarded almost with 
indifi'erence by the mass of educated, and more still 
of even Christian men. 

What a magnificent procession of worthies, each 
bearing a serene front and holy light in his eyes, 
would the great army of scholars in all ages and 
countries present, could they pass together before 
us ! What a galaxy of stars and of constellations 
of stars in the firmament of History ! Numbers 
without number of such men, in the church, as 
Moses, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, 
Solomon, the wisest of men, Paul, brought up at the 
feet of Gamaliel, Augustine, Jerome, Wicklifie, Lu- 
ther, Calvin, Pascal, Fenelon, Cudworth, Larned, 
Chillingworth, Edwards, Chalmers, Neander ; and, 
in the world at large, as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, 
Csesar, Bacon, Leibnitz, Milton, Newton, Porson, 
Herschel, Berzelius, La Place, Cuvier, Gesenius, 
Niebuhr, Passow, Bopp, Grimm, Liebig and Agas- 
siz, in all the departments of science, literature, 
history and language. 

Will it not be both pleasant and profitable to 
consider, what are the characteristics of the true 
scholar, and in what way he can best promote his 
own highest development. 

I. His characteristics. By these are meant, 
1st. His loves and pleasures. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 207 

2d. His liberties. 

3d. His habits. 

1st. And what are his loves and pleasures "? 

He delights in solitude. He is freed in it from 
the interruptions, temptations and tumults of life : 
secluded from the noisy world without, so as to be 
all the more free to range with giant-steps the bright 
world of thought within. He is least alone when 
most alone ; for then, as Plato beautifully defines 
thinking, " he holds sweet dialogue with himself ; " 
or goes forth through the golden gates of the past, 
which open of their own accord before him, to greet 
the venerated men of all ages that stand waiting, 
with crowns on their heads and censers in their 
hands, to minister to his gratification. The closet 
and the study : these are the two corners of Eden 
still left to this world, and the two radiant points 
from which the light of Heaven most streams out, 
over all the earth. 

But it is of the scholar's pleasure in his own acts 
and states, rather than in any thing pertaining to his 
environment, of which we design here to speak. 

(1.) He delights in gaining knowledge. 

There is great pleasure in mere acquisition. 
The very faculty itself, as well as the impulse to 
use it, now wasted by so many upon the pursuit of 
money and power, were made a part of our original 
mental constitution, on purpose that we should em- 



208 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAR, 

ploy them in securing tlie riches of the mind and of 
the heart. 

The more that one increases in knowledge, the 
wider becomes at once his conscious relationship to 
the universe within which he is placed, and on 
which he is to act. The greater therefore is his 
sense of the order, worth and beauty of all that is 
outward to himself, and which was constituted what 
it is, in advance, with direct reference to the capa- 
bilities and wants of the soul ; and the higher and 
tjie broader becomes his own consciousness of himself, 
as the appointed lord of this lower world. " He that 
increaseth knowledge," saith Solomon, ' ' increaseth 
strength ; " or, as Lord Bacon hath it, " knowledge 
is power." To gain new knowledge is one of the 
highest pleasures of life. The constant excitement 
of the eye and the ear, and of the whole sensational 
nature of childhood, in the reception of new ideas 
from every object in every quarter, is one of the 
chief sources of that spontaneous, joyous hilarity, 
with which early youth is everywhere so radiant. 
Not only " is the world ruled by ideas," as is often 
said ; but ideas are also the well-spring of all the 
joy or sorrow of our mortal life. 

Were more men addicted to acquiring new ideas 
through all their life, in grand and glowing succes- 
sion, so many would not say as now that in youth 
they had their largest experience of pleasure. He 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 2.09 

who desires to be a child again, pays certainly a 
poor compliment to the quality either of his mind 
itself, or of his general treatment of it. Ideas ever 
new and ever great are obtainable in whatever di- 
rection one turns his eyes, or his feet, to obtain them. 
It is one of the greatest results of modern civiliza- 
tion that, while money can be obtained in all ages 
by but few, and is in every age obtained by far more 
than ever make a right use of it, the treasures of 
knowledge are made open to all, in forms and ways 
that are of perpetual recurrence, and at prices that 
can be met even from the shrivelled purses of the 
poor. 

That higher style of mental toil and attainment, 
which we call scholarship, may be of two kinds : 
general and special. General scholarship presents 
one of its chief charms, in the wider view which it 
furnishes of the great harmony of analogies jDrevail- 
ing in all sciences and knowledges, as constituting 
one vast sisterhood of mutually according witnesses, 
that they all had a common origin in the will of one 
glorious Divine Being, and all have a common end 
in their benefits and uses to his creature, man. It 
has also the advantage of giving greater breadth to 
the development of the mind itself, greater range to 
its researches, and greater volume to its thoughts. 
Special minute scholarship also has its own individ- 
ual pleasures ; and they are great. The field of its 



210 THE TKUE CHKISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

operations is infinitely diversified ; and the subdi- 
visions of which earnest mental labor is capable are 
endless. There is enough wonder in any minute 
department of investigation in nature, science, art 
or language, to occupy fully one life-time after an- 
other spent in Herculean toil. The greatest beau- 
ties of art are those which are minutest : the great- 
est marvels of nature are those which are micro- 
scopic ; and the greatest blessings of life are those 
momentary benefits, the aggregate of which makes 
such a broad stream of bounty, ever flowing unto all 
men from the great heart of Grod. " He that is 
faithful in that which is least is faithful also in 
much." Nowhere is this more true than in the 
realms of scholarship. Nicety of knowledge is as es- 
sential an idea of a scholar, as nicety of execution is 
of an artist. And, as the Divine mind took great 
pleasure in constructing little things, as is evident 
in the accuracy and harmony of their most minute 
adaptations and uses, and in all their careful elab- 
oration of form and color, in reference to his own 
sense of beauty or that of a happy few of His intel- 
ligent creatures, who should at some future day of 
advanced knowledge, as now, inspect them with 
wonder ; so, the finite mind, when most like the 
Divine in intellect and character, is most fond of 
searching the hidden riches of His wisdom and good- 
ness, and most appreciative of them when found. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 211 

It is no part of real greatness, God's or man's, to 
slight what is little, and invisible either on acconnt 
of its minuteness or of its vast distance from the 
view. That proof of genius, of which we so often 
hear, carelessness about trifles, while rejoicing in a 
vaulting, brilliant style of mind, in certain specula- 
tive or imaginative directions, is but a proof of a 
perverse heart, neglecting its duty because of its 
irksome details ; or of a perverted intellect, expect- 
ing to gain the desired result without heeding God's 
appointed law of work, which is : that, according to 
the quantity and quality of the product, must be the 
quantity and quality of the labor expended. What 
greater folly, than to expect to have the whole with- 
out having each of its component parts. 

The pleasure of investigating minute facts, 
principles, relations and uses is very great. It has 
in it the excitement of busy research, and also of 
perpetual, ever-widening discovery. It furnishes, 
besides, deep, philosophic gratification in the larger 
comprehension afforded by it of the analogies of 
nature and of providence for one's self, and in 
the ability obtained, to verify or modify (he theories 
of science, to extend the boundaries of human 
knowledge, and to multiply the many uses which 
man can make of his own powers or time, or of the 
outer universe to which all his functions of action 
and enjoyment are so exquisitely adapted. The 



212 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

difference between modern and ancient scholarship, 
as between ancient and modern philosophy, lies in 
this one thing chiefly : the greater minuteness of 
the modern, and so its greater universality. Super- 
ficial theorizing took the place, in the ancient, of 
close, repeated, patient investigation, in the modern. 
And the reason why men now-a-days have so many 
more comforts and appliances of every kind, per- 
sonal and social, than those of former times, lies very 
largely in the fact of the revelation which minute 
modern scholarship has made of the hidden ele- 
ments, resources, energies and agencies laid by in 
the great store-house of nature, for the benefit of 
those who shall search after them and find them. 

(2.) He delights in finding truth, as such. 

Truth is the natural and appointed aliment of • 
the human mind. To an angelic mind, or a hu- 
man one in its true normal state, all truth of every 
sort would seem, whenever found, but a part of 
Grod's image of Himself in his works. The charm of 
searching for any truth is to such a mind the charm 
of seeking for something, anew, that has come 
from His heart and hand, and therefore is full of the 
beauty of his skill and love. And if the undevout 
astronomer be truly mad, what must be said of the 
scholar, who, by turning away from God, makes all 
his wisdom utter foolishness, both in His sight and 
in fact ? Much of the scholarship of the world has 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 213 

been indeed hitlierto, under evil preparatory in- 
fluences, not only in a negative, but also in a posi- 
tive vs^ay, ungodly. Multitudes of students, like so 
many possessing v/ealth and power, have used this 
world as abusing it : turning what are properly but 
means to its great ends, into ends of action for 
themselves. 

The habits and tastes engendered by true 
scholarship are favorable to the study and recep- 
tion of evangelical truth as such. The scholar 
has indeed a noble preparation for high, religious 
thought, and for delicate refined sensibility to 
every thing fitted to lead him to the adoration, 
worship and service of Grod. God delights in true 
earnest thinkers. All his forms and degrees of ap- 
proach to his creatures, in his works and word, his 
providence and grace, are alike accommodated to 
the supposition, that they are to be active" and true 
and earnest in their modes of understanding and ap- 
preciating Him and his ways. The whole universe is 
indeed, rightly understood, but an universe of mul- 
titudinous appeals, in high and bright material forms, 
to thought. If "it has pleased God to save men 
by the foolishness of preaching," it has not been by 
choosing fools to be his preachers. Those to whom, 
having arisen and stood upon their feet : according 
to the word sent unto the prophet : " arise and 
stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee :" 



214 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR, 

He has spoken words during the ages, that they 
should speak again for him to all men, have ever 
been the greatest men of their times, in genius and 
learning and thou2;ht : men like Moses and Solo- 
mon and David and Isaiah and Ezekiel and Paul 
and John : such men as mankind would have call- 
ed golden-mouthed, even had they stood up in their 
own names, alone, in their day and generation. The 
highest style of piety can be exhibited only in a 
mind of the largest dimensions for j)Ower and at- 
tainments ; and, as faith rests upon reason, so does 
all lofty religious energy and joy upon high strong 
thought. The quality of the piety, exhibited by 
such men as Paul and Edwards, presupposes by 
necessity the quality of intellect, with which it is 
always found connected. The influence of Chris- 
tianity, in developing scholarship; has been quite 
as remarkable, as in developing public reforms, en- 
terprise, art, or civilization, in any of its specific 
departments. " The living creatures,^' now astir 
within the wheels of all our modern movements, are 
the busy, earnest, studious thinkers of the day. 

The true scholar will be then, legitimately, ob- 
servant, appreciative and studious of all the great 
aspects, bearings and issues of evangelic truth ; 
and, just in proportion as one is entitled to the high 
designation of a scholar, will he exhibit subjectively, 
in spirit and aim, an exact correspondence with the 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 215 

influences and claims of all objective truth with 
which he comes into definite relations. He is in- 
tellectually at one with the universe as it is, re- 
ceptively, in welcoming its lessons, influences and 
benefits to his heart, as was God, actively, in mak- 
ing it for his own pleasure and for the good of his 
creatures. The truth it is, that he everywhere 
longs to find : the truth as it is in Christ : in na- 
ture, history, art, or life, and throughout the wide 
range of the present, past or future. And how de- 
lightful is it to find the truth ! The discovery is 
substantial and abiding. The mind has now some- 
thing on which to repose with confidence : it has 
obtained a new stepping-stone on which to go up 
higher ; and it has a deep, glad sense that its great 
powers have now found their true use, and its 
highest efforts their true end. The human mind is 
as plainly constructed for the pursuit, apprehension 
and enjoyment of truth, as is the eye to bathe in 
floods of light, or as are the chambers of the ear to 
reverberate with sound. 

3dly. He delights in using his own powers. 
So exquisitely has God fashioned both the body 
and the mind, that the mere use of their powers, 
without reference to the object on which they are 
employed, gives great pleasure. What gladness 
does simple motion give to the bird, the quad- 
ruped, the insect and the fish ! Which of them 



216 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

all is still, except -for short periods of necessary 
repose ? The more complicated the structure 
of an animal, the higher the style of his capacities, 
and the broader the range of his being ; so much 
the higher will be his enjoyment, in the natural 
use of his functions. From the lowest forms of 
vermicular or larva life, through all the most varied 
complexities of animal organism, up to man, as 
rises the scale of multiplex energies and uses, in the 
construction of the being, so rises, correspond- 
ingly, the scale of his pleasures in quality, variety" 
and number. Man, as he stands at the summit of 
the ascending series, in the fulness and finish of his 
jjowers, should also appear, and in his completely 
developed state will appear, as the crown of all 
Grod's works on earth, not only in the height and 
breadth of his capacities, but also in the overflow- 
ing abundance of his pleasures. 

The true scholar in his highest form is the 
Christian scholar ; and his proper appointed por- 
tion of good on earth would be most of it sacri- 
ficed, if the temper of his heart and the aims of 
his life were not divine. The scholarship of the 
present day is far more Christian than in any pre- 
ceding age ; although, with remarkable uniformity, 
the scholars of every land and age. Heathen, Papal 
and Christian have occupied, as a class, the ad- 
vanced posts of morality, religion, and theology ia 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 217 

their times. And, just as surely as the commerce, 
enterprise, art, literature and jurisprudence of the 
world are to become thoroughly Christian, and all 
the drift of the past and present is manifestly 
and powerfully in that direction, so ere long is all 
the scholarshij) of the world to be only and com- 
pletely evangelical. 

And what are the pleasures to the truly Chris- 
tian scholar, of the full earnest use of his powers ? 
Great, very great in every direction. The mind was 
made for incessant thought, for seeing, comparing, 
analyzing, arranging and deducing facts and prin- 
ciples ; and exalted indeed is the joy of the mind, 
when at work with all its might upon great objects, 
and for great ends. Not more sublimely sweeps an 
eagle around a lofty mountain-peak, hovering, as if 
intoxicated with delight, over the vast abyss below, 
than circles the excited soul of a noble Christian 
thinker, in the full equipoise of all its powers when 
in their highest state of exaltation, around the 
loftiest summits of truth that are visible to mortal 
eyes. The pleasure which others have only in mo- 
mentary gushes of splendid excitement, from the 
irregularity of their untrained mental action, he, 
having learned, by long and careful self-discipline, 
to sustain consecutive and concentrated habits of 
thought to any desired period of protraction, is able 

to keep in a full ocean-swell in his heart : ever 
10 



218 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

breaking grandly like a sea of glory, wliose waves 
are all waves of liglit^ surge after surge, upon the 
shore of his inner heing. 

The Christian Scholar's thinking, on whatever 
special theme employed, is always as such devoted 
to the greatest of ends. The two ends of his scale 
of thought and of life are God and man. From 
God to man : this is the next of sentences in his 
thoughts to that suhlimest of all utterances : from 
eternity to eternity. Whether ascending or de- 
scending on such a scale, his movements and his 
pleasures are godlike. The true Christian Scholar 
is a sort of intellectual mediator between God and 
man : revealing to human view the hidden stores 
of God's wisdom and goodness, otherwise as much 
undiscovered to ordinary passers-by, as if indeed 
they were not at all in existence. While the sense 
of power is one of the most delightful, natural 
senses of the mind, from the experience of a little 
child who knows enough to blow out a light, and 
laughs at the feat, to that of him who can build a 
telescope or an ocean steamer, or write a great epic, 
it rises to its greatest height, when the end accom- 
plished is one that brings lasting, moral advantage 
to the race. 

But let us consider 

2dly. The liberties of the true Christian 
Scholar. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 219 

To otlier men the great bright outer world is a 
mass of confused unmeaningnesses. Nothing is seen 
as it is, in reference either to its origin or its uses. 
All the real relations of things, whether outward or 
inward, are not only unappreciated but also unwit- 
nessed ; and the wonders with which every mo- 
ment's vision or experience is crowded, appear to 
them, if they look at them at all, like the words of 
a strange language to one who is rude in knowledge. 
The books of thought and truth and life and love 
which lie with large, open, glowing pages before the 
eyes of the Scholar, for his constant rapture in 
gazing at them, seem closed to them with seals 
that they cannot break. But to the Scholar, the 
deep, earnest, patient, right, thinker, of wide liorizon 
and high range in his style of thought, all passages 
of light through this world, or from it to another, 
that God has paved for any but an angel's feet, 
stand ever oj)en, in full, clear, broad, illumination 
before him. 

He has the range of all the many approaches to 
the secret places of His skill and love, which God 
has prepared with such royal munificence for man's 
appreciation of Him and His ways. Others are 
ruled almost inevitably by circumstances : he in a 
great measure rules them. They wait for outward 
opportunity : he is instant in season and out of 
season, in thought, effort, plan and attainment, and 



220 THE TEUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAK, 

in always trying is always succeeding ; while, in 
always looking to God for His blessing on what he 
does, he enjoys at all times doubly whatever he 
obtains, as the fruit both of his own labors and of 
God's co-operative beneficence. 

Like distinguished men, who, when travelling 
in foreign lands, are presented with the freedom of 
the cities through which they pass, he has received 
in the very enlargement of his mind as a Scholar, 
and his investiture as a Christian by God of " all 
things " as " his," the freedom of the universe ; 
and to him alone is realized in its full sense what 
is meant in this world by that phrase so character- 
istic of the gospel : the freedom of the Sons of 
God. 

He is free from the errors, limitations and dis- 
appointments of ignorance ; from the misleadings 
of superstition ; from conscious subjection to others' 
neglects or frowns ; from the power of foolish fears, 
presentiments and morbid imaginations ; and from 
the gross temptations which so often assail effec- 
tually other men and surprise every one by their 
overthrow ; as well as also from the lusts of other 
men, as the lust of gold, of power, of flattery, and 
of all the varied gaudy show of pride. No men work 
so much and so gladly, for so little compensation, 
as Scholars ; and men looking on, say : " Well ! if 
the reward be small, the honor is great, and this 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAK. 221 

makes the balance even between tliem and the rest 
of the world." So indeed writers on political 
economy say in form in their works. But not such 
are the secret thoughts of the Scholar himself. He 
of all men feels that honor is not a matter of any 
man's calling merely, but rather of his own actions 
in it. It is not the outward glitter of his style of 
life , that reconciles him to the narrow equipments 
with which society furnishes it ; but the inward 
satisfaction of it, as meeting the deep interior wants 
of his nature, as a thinker and a doer upon the brief 
stage of life, and as providing him with treasures for 
his own enjoyment, far richer than those that can be 
measured in gold or silver. He is free likewise from 
others' regrets, who feel not only dissatisfied, with- 
out thinking why, with life as it passes ; but also 
at its close generally feel their 'own self-condemna- 
tion, for the frivolity and emptiness of their whole 
previous life, resting with the weight of a mountain 
upon their hearts. He is free too from the wants 
of others, who always pine for something that they 
have not yet obtained. They crave novelty, 
change, excitement, and seek it where if gained it 
cannot last, or even pass away, as it must, without 
reactive sorrow. And he is free from the accidents 
of others. In the peaceful, sequestered vales of 
thought he walks ; and the tumults and the uproar 
of those, who are involved in the conflicts of life 



222 THE TKUE CHKISTIAN SCHOLAR, 

and their hazards, are to him in the far-off distance. 
No class is, as a class, so long-lived as thinters, espe- 
cially earnest, joyous Christian students. Their pow- 
ers remain unbroken to the end. They have inward 
stimulations in high objective aims, mental activity 
and sweet perpetual joy, that of themselves tend 
most powerfully to prolong life. And the more 
really that they deserve the name of Scholars, the 
more do they walk by rules and principles establish- 
ed by God himself, in respect to both outward and 
inward elements of happiness and prosperity : as 
they see their existence and their scope more clear- 
ly, and appreciate more instinctively than other 
men, their beauty and their force. 

Others possess, in the natural endowments of 
their being, an immense amount of what is in their 
hands but unproductive real estate ; while in his 
case his education, in its full. Christian type, con- 
stitutes a great and splendid capital, which he keeps 
with gladness ever invested in man's wants and 
God's claims. And at the same time, in the ob- 
jective resources with which it furnishes him, he 
holds in his hands the keys of Heaven and earth 
and of all their untold riches ; and every door on 
every side, that he fain would enter, flies open, as if 
by some inward magic of its own, at his approach, 
as if his very looks were keys to turn their bolts. 

The Scholar's occasions for employment, more- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 223 

over are of his own making, and they are of per- 
petual recurrence. He determines his own sphere 
of activity. What he is or has or does is under 
God self-appointed. The habit of his mind is 
therefore that of strong, conscious self-direction. 
The more of a scholar that ho becomes, the more 
does each new degree of elevation isolate him, in 
respect to his elements of thought and feeling, 
from the mass around him, who are quite unsym- 
pathetic and indifferent to his high jiursuits ; and 
without the counteracting influences of true piety, 
so outward and communicative as it is in all its 
efforts and effects, the strong centripetal tendency 
of his life would serve to make him not only isola- 
ted in his experiences, but also seclusive and selfish 
in his feelings. The attitude of his mind towards 
all surrounding objects : his apprehension and appre- 
ciation of them : his standards for judging them 
and his desires in relation to them are all directly 
relevant to his own special position for viewing the 
universe. What others see not he beholds, and 
what they gaze upon he often does not see at all. 
Indeed, as each man's sight of the sun or of any 
object that its light reveals is his own, and can be 
no other man's ; so, the universe is to each of us 
what his eye for perceiving it is, and what his heart, 
for appreciating its beauties and treasures and 
glories. 



224 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

3dly. The lialoits of the true Christian scliolar. 

These are twofold : his habits of thoiiglit and 
feeling about his work, and his habits of application 
to it. 

(1.) His two cliaracteristic moods of mind toward 
his work represent well, not only the double x^olarity 
of his own thoughts, but that also of every right 
heart toward its duty : patience and enthusiasm. 

§ 1. His patience. 

He accepts, not only contentedly but also gladly, 
the law of labor, against which others in such num- 
bers are, either in spirit or action, at perpetual vari- 
ance. He loves labor : an acquired taste, which he 
has slowly but surely obtained, as one of the great, 
ruling elements of his daily life. He has schooled 
his heart to keep a steady eye upon the future. All 
heroism begins and ends in the habit of making the 
future present to the heart, as containing in itself 
all the great realities of life. His heroism is not, 
as is the bravery of a soldier, or adventurer, that of 
a crisis : impulsive and temporar}^ ; but the hero- 
ism of a whole life, steady and true, by day and 
night, in summer and winter, from youth to old 
age : not issuing from caprice or excitement for a 
little time or space ; but ever flowing in a full 
stream from the fountains of reason and of con- 
science, wherever it can find a channel for its tide. 
He has faith in the future, in the steady sequences 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 225 

of cause and effect, in the positiveness of Divine 
Providence, and in Time as the great Ripener of all 
things thought or done by man. 

There are no preparatives for patience, except 
those of grace, like those of thorough classical study. 
The first requirement made by the genius of scholar • 
ship of a student, in his very novitiate, is self-con- 
trol. Peace is the atmosphere of the secret place 
of study, as of that of prayer. Almost all the self- 
government of society : its equilibrium of thought 
and its great all-pervading stability of feeling, even 
under the reign of Christianity, are, rightly inter- 
preted, but the results in one form or another of the 
thorough, intellectual discipline of the leaders of 
society, in this and preceding ages. 

Often is the scholar thronged and almost suffo- 
cated with difficulties. He must have indeed steady 
nerves and a persistent foot. His eyes must look 
right on, and his eyelids straight before him. Often, 
after long and eager wandering through some narrow 
winding path, to find the object of his hopes, he 
comes, when most excited with the expectation of 
success, to the verge of a precipice, or to some high, 
perpendicular obstruction, and must retrace all his 
steps again to the very place of beginning. Critical 
scholarship is full of such experiences. Ever and 
anon badgered and baffled in its course, but al- 
ways erect in its spirit and earnest in its work, it 
10* 



226 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

holds on resolutely to its undertakings. Trials 
are its needful discipline, as they are of reli- 
gion : hardening, tempering and purifying its char- 
acter. The true Christian scholar is energetic and 
hopeful. Some trial and trouhle must be accepted, 
he feels, as a part of the necessary wear of life. For 
the rest : and this is the greater part of all the 
fretted experience of men ; which is self-deter- 
mined, from over-sensitiveness to it or from want of 
earnest effort to remove it : he ever bids his heart re- 
member, that there is a way out. For every temp- 
tation, saith the word of Grod, and so for every trouble 
there is a way of escape. This is a cardinal j)art of 
his great, practical philosophy of life. Others allow 
themselves to think and say that they cannot do, 
what yet they see some around them do, for their 
own improvement or the good of others, and content 
themselves with a paralytic philosophy of their own 
powers and theory, and of course practically also of 
their duties. 

Men honor only what appears upon the surface 
and strikes the sense with its glitter. Parade and 
noise, if well supported in the rear, make an essen- 
tial front to all the shows of human greatness, that 
men are disposed to admire in their own age. But 
the true forces of society that inspire and control 
its movements, like those of nature and of the uni- 
verse itself, are out of sight to the multitude and 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 227 

revealed only to tlie eye of tliought. The true no- 
blemen of the world move unknown among the men 
of their generation. They are the toiling, earnest, 
persevering students of the times, ever busy in pene- 
trating into the recesses of nature and the mysteries 
of life and the wonders to be found in the invisible 
realms of thought and truth : lovingly bent on bring- 
ing forth to the view of all men whatever beauties 
and riches they can find, for their use and enjoyment. 
And, as a tree has received its present growth and 
shape, from myriads on myriads of distinct mi- 
nute influences, from sun and soil and wind and 
rain ; so, the final results of their efi'orts, which the 
rest of mankind find of such practical advantage to 
themselves, are the sum total of multitudes of sep- 
arate thoughts, examinations, experiments and 
labors, patiently encountered and added to each 
other, pile upon pile for years. It is in their very 
patience, their long, calm, bold waiting for the de- 
sired end of all their labors, that their power lies, 
and with it their honor. 

What a demand does all true, high scholarship 
make upon its votaries for patience ! It never 
ceases to require continuity of effort. Genius, wit 
and speculation may flourish on happy hits ; but 
scholarship is the preparation and growth of years. 
Its results are not like those of a battle, achieved 
suddenly and once for all, but rather like those of a 



228 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

huge edifice, carefully planned and constructed from 
the corner-stone without to the last finishing stroke 
within. Beside mere continuity of effort, which 
might have in it the variety of constant change, 
scholarship demands a great deal of repetitiousness 
of aim and toil ; because sometimes the end to be 
gained is a large collection of many details of the 
same kind, and at others repeated failures to obtain 
the full result in every desired particular perpetually 
stimulate the mind to new efforts to avoid them. 
A frequent, critical review also of one's supposed 
achievements is not the smallest, in some instances 
at least, of the forms of patient toil that the true 
scholar is ever willing to impose upon himself. And 
so also the element of time is one of the most fun- 
damental elements of all broad and high scholar- 
ship, as of all broad and high character. Slowly, 
although surely and majestically, rises day after day 
the vast pile to its completion. 

Patience in its higher forms is bravery. This 
the Komans understood and therefore described a 
brave man as fortis (from fero to bear), one who 
could endure the worst. So Paul speaks of charity, 
or Christian principle, as " bearing all things : " it 
is brave. ■ One of the finest of all preparations, ac- 
cordingly, for real bravery in the battle of life and 
even in the actual thunder-storms of war itself is 
obtainable by long-protracted, thorough, mental 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR, 229 

drill in study. An army of well-trained Christian 
scholars would certainly be, in a war of principle, 
the most formidable army that any one could meet. 
And that higher bravery of daily life that is needful, 
to go persistently and triumphantly through all the 
labors and troubles of every-day experience, to the 
end : higher, because demanded on so much larger 
a scale and without the aid of great occasions and 
great crowds to animate it : can, next to religion, 
and in conjunction with it, be best obtained from a 
high and true and large style of mental discipline. 

As most schools and colleges are at present con- 
ducted, a young man runs a complete gauntlet, 
consciously or unconsciously, during his whole course 
in them. His destiny is left wholly, or nearly so, to 
his own unenlightened judgment and his own un- 
supported courage, to keep steadily at work for ben- 
efits that are out of sight. Nothing therefore does he 
need more than persistent patience to the very end. 

§ 2. His enthusiasm. 

The word student from studium, eagerness, zeal, 
implies that he, who deserves this honorable title, 
is " fervid in spirit," Zeal is an essential part of 
the character of a scholar. No two ideas more per- 
fectly antagonistic to each other could be combined, 
than those united in such a phrase as a lazy student. 
Not more absurd would it be, to talk of sluggish 
lightning, or obscure brilliancy. 



230 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAK. 

Character is so little cultivated in this world in 
any direction ; and all ideas of artistic development 
are so foreign to this subject in the thoughts of most 
men ; that patience and enthusiasm are both regard- 
ed commonly as natural endowments, where they are 
manifested, rather than as virtues prepared and nur- 
tured from height to height, in the heart that pos- 
sesses them. But they are voluntary excellences 
which each man is required to have, as truly as 
honesty or purity of heart. They appear also at 
first sight to be contrary, the one to the other ; 
while in fact they blend as harmoniously in union, 
as the subjective and objective elements of things, 
which are everywhere sublimely paired together, 
and which in fact they respectively to a great 
degree represent. The virtues of patience ' and 
enthusiasm are body and soul to each other. Pa- 
tience is the response of the soul, on the passive 
side of its nature, to stubborn things without, that 
press upon its consciousness ; and enthusiasm is 
the response of all the many active elements of its 
being to the opportunities for effort, progress and 
usefulness, which it beholds around and before it in 
its onward pathway. 

The Christian scholar, when in his full develop- 
ment, has an inward sense of the beautiful, the 
true and the good which other men lack : so that 
they are blind to the vision which perpetually en- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 231 

chants him. He seems to himself, ahnost even 
when walking amid the dust of this gross world, to 
be passing over fairy ground. Forms, aspects, 
colors, that others never see at all, are always glow- 
ing in his eye and burning in his heart. The fire 
of his thoughts is celestial and never goes out or 
even goes down, but is always blazing upward to 
its native source. The impulses of a true Christian 
scholar are of a high origin : his labors all have a 
noble end. He so reaches upwards and outwards 
as always to long for power to reach farther. He so 
fills up the measure of his opportunities, as to feel 
ever constrained by the want of more time, to do 
what he aims to do and longs to do in his brief day 
upon the earth. His habitual consciousness is that 
of a soul full of daring, looking out for new fields on 
which to employ it : full of strength, and wishing 
to use it ; and full of all accumulations of knowl- 
edge and goodness, and wishing to bestow them 
upon others. Time, therefore, never hangs as a 
weight upon his neck, in the race of life ; nor does 
melancholy sit brooding, like a bird of darkness, upon 
the altar of his heart. The world always seems to 
have so few laborers in it, really addressing them- 
selves to its true wants, that there is at all times an 
abundance of room and work for him. His field of 
view is earth-wide : his sense of God's presence 
with him now is strong and quickenirg ; and the 



232 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAE. 

thought of his continued existence in that Presence 
forever is full at all times of grand inspiration to 
him. His highest taste is for deeds of love ; and 
his strongest passion is to please Him, who made 
him and has bought him with his own precious 
blood. The wants of others are ever sounding like 
the surges of a sea of darkness in his ear ; and life is 
full to him of splendid opportunities for the highest 
sort of moral action. With his own big soul within 
him : with God above and around him, and suffering 
men in multitudes at his feet : with Heaven before 
and Hell behind : how can he be tame in his spirit, 
or low in his aims, or faltering in his movements ! 
Whether he moves, or stands, upon the stage of life, 
it must be as a man of moral grandeur in his 
thoughts and plans : one, the inward swell and glow 
of whose feelings will give an air of nobility to all 
the motions, looks and tones of even his mortal 
frame. 

To an earnest. Christian scholar life appears to 
be, at all times, a drawn game between himself and 
the devil. It is not merel}^ Shakspeare's idea of 
life which he has : that this world is a stage, and 
all the men and women are actors upon it : as a 
place for the exhibition of human nature to human 
eyes ; bat Paul's rather and the gospel's : that we 
are all here upon a race-ground, and compassed 
about with a great cloud of witnesses on earth and 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 233 

in Heaven, where we must each run so as to obtain, 
or, failing to do so, lose not a mere earthly crown, 
but an heavenly one forever. 

(2.) His habits of action toward his work, like 
his moods of feeling toward it, are twofold. 

§ 1. It is his habit, to be thorough in his style 
of executing it. 

He is thorough, in the two great particulars, 
of completeness of plan and finish of execution. 
Thoroughness is the same as througlmess. He trav- 
erses with careful exactness the full orb of his sub- 
ject, or of his department of subjects. He pene- 
trates the hidden recesses of the science, art or lan- 
guage, to which he is devoted, through and through. 
His analyses are always exhaustive : his surveys 
always complete. The discovery by himself of real 
negligence in his work would entail upon him, at 
once, a sense of guilt. The frequent occurrence of 
such a fault would justly rob him, by the verdict of 
his own conscience, of all right to the designation 
of a real scholar, or to his own self-respect as a man. 
Blunders anywhere look to him as would rents in a 
kingly robe or blotches on a piece of art. Accu- 
racy is the very jewel of his honor. He is slow in 
forming decisions, because so minute in his examina- 
tion of their proper grounds ; but, when formed, 
they are fixed facts to him, and stand in their places, 
as if made of iron. He is wilhng " to take pains " 



234 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

now, ratlier than to be himself, by and by, taken of 
them. Care in details, at all times, care in find- 
ing them and in discriminating and employing them 
aright : this defines the fundamental difference 
between a great mechanician, painter, sculptor, 
anatomist, or even Christian and an ordinary one ; 
and so does it also between the true scholar and the 
false. What his taste and his eye demand of him, 
at all times, in his work is quality, rather than 
quantity. 

§ 2. It is his habit, to concentrate his full force 
of mind upon his work. 

It is an essential idea of the true scholar, that 
he bends his powers to the utmost upon his occu- 
pation. It is demanded by the very scope of his 
name and office, that they should be made to burn 
always with intensity, as upon a given focal point, 
on every part of his work. Other men often pass 
through life without really knowing themselves or 
being known of others. They have capacities of 
reasoning, discrimination, comparison and judg- 
ment, of which they dream not, because never using 
them on any high subject or to any full intense 
degree : mines of wealth in their own natures, that 
they have never opened : heavenly treasures which 
they have never put at all to usury. The true 
scholar, on the contrary, has asserted his rightful 
place over things around him as their proper inter- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 235 

preter, manager and owner, and demands of them 
persistently and successfully to give up the secrets 
which they hold, for his benefit. 

In the use of one's faculties, up to the entire 
amount of their vigor, there is, when they are in 
their full combination of action, great joy to one's 
self and great power over others. The motives 
which most stimulate the mind to make such a 
complete outlay of itself, perpetually, are blessed 
and divine ; and the employment which best evokes, 
at all times, such a conscious demonstration of one's 
whole energy of being, is a blissful emjiloyment. 
Not more willing is the fruitful earth itself to yield 
its riches to him, who will faithfully seek after them, 
than are the sweet waters of truth or salvation, to 
run into any one's well, who values them suffi- 
ciently to dig down to the depths where they flow. 

The accomplished scholar has acquired a pow- 
er of fixing his attention fully on any subject, 
at will, and of transferring it from one topic to 
another ; which of itself alone suffices to open to 
him myriad doors to all sorts of chambered secrets, 
in every part of the universe. Power of attention, 
or of the fixation of any faculty or set of faculties 
upon their proper object, is the chief exercise of 
voluntary power, which the mind can employ over 
its own functions. This it is the daily work of 
the scholar to exercise ; and whatever other power 



236 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

a strong will has over the native enersiies of the 
mind, to intensify their action when in use, he also 
possesses. 

Like all men of high thought, imagination and 
faith, the scholar holds always in full view a lofty 
ideal of his work. The elements of his ideal, like 
those of the painter, embrace, in respect to the 
style of results to he gained, the following ideas : 
fulness of outline, completeness of detail and finish 
in execution. To realize the actual demands of 
such a comprehensive mass of conceptions, in the 
form and direction, the quality and quantity, of 
each hour's labor, day by day through all the year, 
will require great earnestness of feeling and concen- 
tration of purpose and power of will, at all times. 

The more real genius a scholar possesses, the 
more he responds instinctively to all appeals, direct 
and indirect, to work. That is no fanciful combina- 
tion of ideas which so often occurs in the biography 
of great men : "he was a man of great genius and 
of unbounded industry." Any man who has un- 
bounded industry has, at least, one large streak of 
genius in him, not to say also of success. Dull na- 
tures neither stir up themselves to action, nor re- 
spond, with any sensitiveness, to quickening in- 
fluences from without. 

The student needs surely, if any other one does, 
to be a man of principle or rather of principles, many, 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 237 

fixed and great. Energy, method and patient per- 
severance must be his uniform characteristics. His 
hours and places of study he must keep sacred from 
invasion. Whatever he takes in hand he must 
master. What he gains he must keep, and be able 
to use at all times familiarly. 

There are especially certain maxims and first 
principles, worthy to be expanded into a scholar's 
guide-book, which, for the benefit of the young 
student, shall find a place, for at least their mere 
enumeration here. 

They are such as these : 

1. The method for attaining to the highest 
scholarship in the end is simply this : while being 
regular and constant in one's work, to get every 
day's lesson in first-rate style : as in the construc- 
tion of a brick edifice, if every brick is itself first- 
rate and is laid in first-rate cement and in a first- 
rate way, the whole structure will, when completed, 
be throughout by necessity of first-rate quality. 

2. Whatever is worthy of being done at all is 
worthy of being done in the best manner possible. 

3. There is a very great difierence, as in char- 
acter, art, and even business, so also in scholarship, 
between being exactly right and a little wrong. 

4. Every man makes his own future. 

5. Every one can afford to work hard for him- 



238 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAE. 

self ; and if so, how much more for both himself 
and all the world beside. 

6. The benefit of all true education is not in 
itself, but in its uses. 

7. Both God and man always help those, who 
help themselves, and much more those who help 
others also. 

8. In God's kingdom every man reaps exactly 
what he sows. 

II. In what way a true scholar can best pro- 
mote his own highest development. 

1st. He must do really and fully all things for 
God. 

To men who think of God, as but a poetical 
description of some occult principle in nature, or of 
the whole material frame-work of the universe itself, 
it may seem strange that thoughts of him can give 
any spur to the soul. But conceived of as He is, 
as a Being before whom all others united, whether 
for knowledge, power or character, are less than 
nothing, to whom all the myriads of worlds that he 
has made, and all their wondrous contents, are but 
the dust of his feet : the ever-present, tender- 
hearted, loving God, bending joyously down over 
each one of his earthly children : like what an orb 
of splendor beyond splendor, does he glow upon the 
vision of the delighted soul and fill the whole hori- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 239 

zon of its consciousness ! Before such light, such 
beauty, such love, the soul must, by the very neces- 
sity of its nature, as born of Him and for Him, arise 
and shake itself and put on all its strength. Per- 
sonal love to God, with the sure consciousness of his 
own glorious friendship in return : what fuel will it 
not furnish to thought and feeling and vigorous 
mental effort. Labor, spontaneously generated by 
such sentiments of affection to him, or purposely 
bestowed toward him as the formal object of its 
aims and services, will give to all real scholarship 
the fullest possible amount of growth and fruitage. 
Human specimens of intellectuality have been so 
few and poor, and are so still, because, like plants 
grown in darkness, they have been reared away from 
the sunlight of Grod's sought and cherished smile. 
All beauty, power and dignity, in any part of our 
nature, are obtained only under the right ruling- 
influence of the upper elements of our being : the 
light of reason, the breathings of conscience, the 
power of faith and the inspiration of hope : all 
Clod-ward in their natural tendencies ; as in the 
body all the other members derive their light and 
usefulness from the head, which is placed over them 
to guide them. 

But, beside the heightened action of the soul 
itself under the stimulus of a true sense of God, as 
its object and joy forever, the scholar will obtain, 



240 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

in maintaining riglit relations to Him, his manifest 
guidance and blessing. Many see Him only in 
great crises, or on the stage of national events ; hut 
he is in fact intimately present at all times with us 
all : more so than was ever any father in his fami- 
ly, when surrounded by his children, hearing their 
words, noticing their actions and gladdening them 
with his presence, and being made glad by them. 
God, who made the palatial chambers of the soul, 
knows how to walk up and down in them, when he 
wills, in the glory of his goodness. He, who made 
the eye, knows how to illuminate it from without 
or from within ; and he who made the foot knows 
how to plant it on the paths, where he himself 
walks in gladness with his children. " Prayer and 
provender," says the old quaint proverb, " delay no 
man." Study, baptized with a spirit of prayer, 
has angel-features even to a human beholder ; but 
much more to him who made the mind for just 
such an employment of its time and powers, and 
who finds nothing among all his works so beautiful 
to his eye, as a right heart earnestly at work for his 
sake. 

The highest attainable development of science, 
literature, art, labor or adventure, is its religious 
development ; and so it is true of men in any em- 
ployment or profession, that their surest path to 
success, even according to earthly measurements of 
its height, is that of religion. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 241 

The scholar, who really strives in all things to 
please God, will feel that a Critic inspects his work, 
demanding its perfection, far higher than any ideal 
self or ideal public, before whose fancied verdict 
against him another may tremble. He will feel 
that he has ends to gain far grander than those 
around him desire to secure. His life seems full to 
him of the seeds of all great things. Each new 
moment is a new opportunity for some heroic deed. 
Life is to him a sublime march into an ever-open- 
ing, ever-glowing, gorgeous future. 

The idea is quite prevalent that real scholarship 
produces, or at least implies, a cold nature. Clas- 
sical and frigid are regarded as terms quite sy- 
nonymous. Many men indeed of a dull, phleg- 
matic temperament, especially in these modern 
times, when the temptations to minds of an ener- 
getic mould to grasp after the material prizes of 
life are so great, have consecrated themselves, for 
their own gratification if not for the world's special 
advantage, to the walks of study. But a dead- 
alive scholar, like a so-called Christian of the same 
type, makes but a miserable figure indeed, in the 
ranks of honor in which he has placed himself A 
cool head is one of the most essential qualifications 
for scholarship ; but not a cold heart. The only 
combination, in any department of human labor or 

experience, that brings to the producer or any re- 
11 



242 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

cipieut the right product of joy or excellence is 
this : a cool head and a warm heart. Grreatness of 
heart is^ as every one knows, the most uncommon 
symptom of humanity in any part of the world. 
To be simple, gentle, meek, affectionate, fervid, 
tender : would to multitudes seem to be weak and 
womanish. But Christ, who had in his spirit and 
acts alike all the glory of manhood, and of woman- 
hood, and of childhood, combined, as was meet in 
Him who was to be the perfect type of the whole 
human race, is the model of the true scholar. Out 
of his entire life in all its minutest forms of activ- 
ity should ring forth loud and clear, as its perpet- 
ual, sweet, deep melody to every listening ear : 
" Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's 
business ? " The only honor that intellectual cul- 
tivation possesses in Heaven or on earth, is that of 
a high means to a higher end. Its riches are either 
squandered or hoarded, if not purposely used to 
contribute to the greater beauty and power of a 
right heart. The more evangelical and glowing the 
type of religious development, the finer the reactive 
influence of the scholarship and the character mu- 
tually upon each other. The Bible-command to 
men of all trades and professions, alike, is, " Be not 
slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, serving 
the Lord ! " In what a meagre, shrivelled form, 
compared with its proper dimensions, has the schol- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 243 

arship of the world hitherto appeared ! When the 
structure of Human Society shall in advancing 
ages be completed, in all its fulness of height and 
breadth of beauty and strength, as a vast temple 
of praise to God, full of the brightness of His glory : 
that grand edifice of which Christian scholars are 
to be, in every part of the world, the chief human 
builders : what a work will they then be found to 
have done upon the earth, and what a high com- 
mission from above will they prove themselves to 
have had, beyond others of their race, as laborers 
with God for man ! 

The elements of personal character which are 
most beautiful in a Christian scholar, before both 
God and man, are these : simplicity, the last at- 
tainment alike in science, invention and art, on the 
one hand, and in human character, on the other ; 
lionorableness, which is as beautiful in a scholar, as 
is gallantry in a soldier ; integrity, which, as the 
word itself, like the word entire derived through the 
French from the same root, means, is wholeness or 
soundness, so that without it no man is himself or 
can be, but is on the contrary only the broken spe- 
cimen of a man ; purity, the want of which sullies 
bim, as it would the minister at the altar or the 
virgin in her robe of whiteness ; self-respect, withr 
out which no one else can respect him ; industry, 
but for which he can neither get nor keep the 



244 THE TEUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

name or character of a scholar ; and active ever- 
flowing benevolence, according to whose dictates he 
is to lay out all the riches that he has obtained, 
natural and acquired, for others, 

2dly, He must keep himself in full sympathy 
■with the age. 

If any one upon earth ought to be practical in 
his aims, it is the scholar. He sees, or ought to 
see, with his purified vision, as other men cannot, 
the real wants of the world as they are ; and he it 
is who alone has the materials in his hand for meet- 
ing them. The end of knowledge and of scholar- 
ship is usefulness to others. Utility is indeed the 
law of all values, human and divine. The personal 
life or labor, which is divorced from the actual ex- ■ 
perience or wants of men, is so far worthless. But 
how many have turned scholarship, as others have 
religion, into a mere gilded abstraction. It has in- 
deed passed into a habit with multitudes to jeer, 
without knowing it, at great truths and rules of 
conduct in calling them beautiful theories : as if a 
passing laugh could suddenly change a great com- 
manding fact into a glittering generality. 

A man may be as much of a miser in hoarding 
knowledge, as in hoarding gold. He that would be 
the greatest of all in the kingdom of thought, as in 
that of faith, must be the servant of all. Pitiful 
indeed is any perversion of scholarsliip to purposes 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 245 

of parade and pride. Eeal scholarship is as averse 
to any such perversion, as is real piety. And yet 
there are many who regard classical, finish of thought 
and style, as the highest attainment possible to be 
made on earth ; and that not as any means of bene- 
fit to others, but as a mere shining honor to one's 
self. 

The true Christian scholar however will study 
his age, as his own legitimate field of action, and 
strive to communicate the light and heat of his 
own inward life to it, as one of its great permanent 
realities. He will not simply feel that he is acting 
his part in a great amphitheatre, in which the sur- 
rounding air is filled with eyes and ears, intent 
upon all that he says and does ; but also that, 
wherever he goes, he is a seedsman sowing good or 
evil at every step which shall stand up in the world, 
long after he has left it, as the lasting product of 
his life. Of all men in the community the scholar 
is the most truly entitled to be called a representa- 
tive man : so many secret wonders stand waiting 
his beck for the time of their deliverance to man- 
kind, and so many interests of the highest sort and 
of ever new occurrence are decided by the form and 
force of his movements. He has obtained light and 
he should disperse it. He holds the keys of know- 
ledge in his hands, and should open with them the 



246 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR, 

ways of enjoyment, usefulness and lionor to as many 
as possible. 

It is a sort of natural habit of scholars as a 
class to act towards the age as a compensation or 
complement to its deficiencies, real or supposed. 
When the tendencies of the community are cen- 
tripetal, as in monarchical Europe, the influence of 
the universities is thrown with living and almost 
instinctive energy and utterance, on the side of 
democratic ideas and institutions. When the ten- 
dency is centrifugal rather than centripetal, as in 
this country, they, or at least the professors in 
them, are apt to be of a more centripetal and con- 
servative style of action But to balance the move- 
ments of the age, so as to keep the ship of state 
from being rocked unduly either way, is certainly 
but a small part of the work appointed for the 
scholar, as the man who alone among his fellows 
has had the crown of authority set upon his head 
by his Maker. He is called, on the contrary, of 
God, not simply to keep the vessel trim, but much 
more to steer it safely over boisterous seas, and with 
bold heroic faith, into " the place of broad rivers " 
prepared by His covenant for the nations. 

3dly. He must keep himself at all times full of 
work. 

Work is the law of success in every thing under 
the sun. Even those who do not have to work to 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 247 

make money must needs work to keep it ; and lie 
who has tried the two will testify that it is harder 
to keep money, than to make it. The mechanism 
of the mind is all constructed with reference to the 
constant pressure- of necessary work upon its ener- 
gies. This is to give tone and movement and di- 
rection perpetually to them. Industry is therefore 
an absolute necessity to health or happiness or vir- 
tue. He who is always employed with all his might 
on the proper objects of his pursuit will not only 
find a trail of results accompanying him that will 
surprise even him ; but he will find also the occa- 
sions for fresh interest and labor perpetually multi- 
plying in his path. 

Many scholars so-called have indifferent health 
because, under the influence of the false and per- 
nicious theory that earnest protracted labor of the 
mind is as such detrimental to high bodily vigor, 
they restrain themselves with cold and painful per- 
tinacity from the most natural and joyous use of 
their powers, and spend the time and force thus 
foolishly withheld from answering the great objective 
demands of life upon them, in rummaging over 
their own consciousness and the whole realm espe- 
cially of their bodily sensations, to find trouble or 
at least the beginnings of it where they can. A 
scholar is designed as little by his Maker to occupy 
his thoughts with himself, as a Christian. Melan- 



248 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

clioly is God's visitation upon an idle mind : his 
mode rather of scourging such an one back again 
to his duty ; for the way of escape from any trouble 
in life is duty coupled with trust in God. Blessed 
be His name for placing thorns and briars in the 
way of all, who are inclined to indulge in voluntary 
mental inefficiency. There is too much bound up 
in this brief life of ours : the possibilities of our 
nature and of our earthly relations and circum- 
stances are too great ; and the splendors yet to be 
unfolded in the advancing history of mankind at 
large, or of any one of its members in particular, 
are too magnificent : that voluntary torpidity of in- 
tellect should be endurable as a matter of duty, or 
decency, to either God or man. 

No man knows what he can do until he really 
tries, up to the full limit of his opportunities and 
capacities. It is he who is always trying to do 
something greater and better than hitherto, who is 
always achieving wonders. Difficulties vanish at 
once, like mere spectral terrors, at his approach. 
Men and circumstances yield before him. He as- 
serts his proper lordship over things around him 
and finds that they all show at once a willing alle- 
giance. The law of Divine help to human workers 
is : " to him that hath shall more be given." God's 
plan of life for each one can be realized or known, 
only as each one makes at all times the fullest pos- 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 249 

sible outlay of every energy, power and resource, 
in all conceivable forms of duty, usefulness, love 
and honor ; and so finds in the aggregate results of 
all his efforts at the end of life, in what he did 
truly and fully accomplish, the work that he was 
actually called and prepared to do by his great 
Maker. The key-note therefore of each man's 
heart, in respect to every opportunity and responsi- 
bility in life should be this, " I will try ! " really, 
constantly, hopefully, ever, " try ! " This is the 
spirit of which all greatness and all high goodness 
are made. 

The great, ruinous tendency of almost all Amer- 
ican scholarship, is haste for results and those only 
of a material kind ; and a consequent narrowness 
of preparation for any high and broad attainments 
in the end. The tendency to be unpractical and 
selfish, in using one's educational resources when 
obtained, is a fault of perverted human nature it- 
self ; but the tendency to satisfy one's self with a 
narrow and pitiful scale of educational outfit for 
the many and great demands of life, is one of the 
special faults of our own country. The student 
should be early made to comprehend that his plat- 
form of research, study, knowledge and thought 
must be broad. Those who set his tastes and man- 
age his interests at the outset should aim, as the 
first point to be gained in his proper development, 



250 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

to make liim feel that there must be and is, a great 
and all-sufficient Object fixed perpetually over 
against his whole, sensitive, active being, for him to 
see and serve and love : fitted to every want and 
faculty of his nature, in all the height and breadth 
and depth of his entire consciousness. He must in 
the next place be brought under the power of exact 
and steady drill ; and last of all he must be led 
firmly on in right directions, over the true fields of 
intellectual toil, and for a full amount of both space 
and time. 

All this varied work of his appointed guides for 
him, designed and executed intelligently and per- 
sistently in his behalf, has but one real aim : to es- 
tablish in him the same earnest and fixed habits of 
self-treatment. All his real growth of mind and 
character must be, from first to last, high continued 
self-growth ; and the ofiice of his teachers is but to 
secure the right processes and directions of it for 
him at the beginning, and to inspire him at the 
same time, so far as possible, to carry them on af- 
terwards for himself to full completion. If there- 
fore he has been rightly directed, and responds him- 
self heartily to the moulding influences that he has 
received, he will go on through life, holding the 
greatest object of action ever in clear view : full of 
the feeling and right in the habit, at all times, of 
thorough self-drill : grudging neither time nor toil 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 251 

spent on his own inward self ; and being both wide 
and far-reaching, in his own chosen style of self- 
development. 

There are two modes of high intellectnal self- 
culture which surpass all others, for both the amount 
and style of their benefits ; and on which for that 
reason the mature student, who aims at the great- 
est possible results in ever-abounding continuance 
to himself, should be always earnestly intent : the 
study of language, the philosophic, artistic, com- 
prehensive and com]3arative study of it, in different 
forms ; and the study of the art of composition. 
Of all just study of language the ancient lan- 
guages must form the basis, not only in a prelimi- 
nary but also in a perpetual way. Nor can they be 
studied rightly by themselves alone : as they are but 
the lower radical forms of the upper-growing, full- 
flowered languages of modern times. In these their 
juice and strength and beauty are all still found. 
They lived in fact and died for these their successors : 
as every thing else in the grand procession of events 
on earth, however valuable in itself, has yet its 
chief value in its connections, as a matter of profit 
and gain to those who come after it. One of the 
chief reasons why the study of the ancient lan- 
guages is so partial in this country and attended 
with so little high exultation of feeling is this : 
that they are studied so much by themselves and 



252 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAE. 

therefore out of their connections and apart from 
their true uses. Who would expect to find any 
such pleasure in studying a mere mass of base- 
clefs, separated from the accompanying parts of the 
tunes whose under-tones they form, as in studying 
and practising them with a full insight and use of 
all the correlated elements of harmony ? 

The study of language in its highest forms and 
broadest relations calls into exercise, beyond any 
other study, all the varied faculties of the mind : 
it feeds the soul perpetually with the choicest 
thoughts and sentiments of the greatest and best 
minds in the past ; while the taste is perpetually 
refined and exalted by constant communion with 
the most elaborate and beautiful specimens of logi- 
cal and rhetorical art ; and the inspiration of the 
great aims and great deeds of those who adorned 
the elder ages by their achievements, is breathed 
through their works into the hearts of those who 
sit in rapt admiration at their feet. 

The careful, earnest practise of the art of com- 
position, according to the highest ideals that the 
mind can form, both as to the style of thoughts to 
be expressed and the most effective and attractive 
method of expressing them, will increase, beyond 
any other mode of self-culture, both the fact and 
the sense of the real fulness and readiness of one's 
inward resources, and of the ever-expanding ele- 



THE TKUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAE. 253 

ments of growtli with which his Maker has en- 
dowed him as a man. Pitiable indeed is his men- 
tal condition, who looks upon this grand employ- 
ment, of all his faculties in combination, as a task 
which he is glad to escape ; and who therefore from 
its burdensomeness seldom or never undertakes such 
delightful labor. 

As the habit of regular, right composition is 
one of the most rewarding of all habits that one 
can possibly form, we are quite disposed to give the 
young student a brief homily upon the matter for 
his good. Have then the habit of writing regular- 
ly. Choose a subject that interests you and when 
once chosen adhere firmly to it, whatever dissatis- 
faction with it afterwards may tempt you to ex- 
change it for another. Grather together at the out- 
set upon paper the first thoughts that interested 
you in the subject, and add to them what you can 
by frequent sallies in the same field after other 
kindred thoughts. When the pile is large enough 
for a plan, form one, and one suggested by the 
thoughts themselves and demanded for them. Tiien 
study the plan as such, to make it complete in it- 
self When this is accomplished : take it up vig- 
orously and eagerly, part by part and limb by limb, 
to clothe the dry forms and formulas of the plan 
with full, free, flowing thought and feeling. Make 
it a rule, from first to last, to think only of your 



254 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

subject and its uses, in unfolding it, and not at all 
of yourself ; and while not rejecting ornament, 
never to seek for it as such, but to seek truth and 
strength and fulness of representation first and then 
to add to your subject, in its exact and earnest 
treatment, whatever illustrations of beauty natu- 
rally occur to your thoughts, serving to illuminate 
it or to enchant the reader or hearer with it, whose 
profit and pleasure you are seeking. When thus 
finished in your best style lay it by, and when it 
has become quite cold and is to you like the com- 
position of another, take it up for a thorough sift- 
ing out of all waste or needless materials, or of 
everything which does not contribute to its positive 
clearness, strength or beauty. Concentrate and con- 
dense where you can, and finish and burnish the 
whole composition to a still higher degree of excel- 
lence. You will not pursue such a course long, be- 
fore what you first commenced as a drudgery, or at 
least as a duty, will become one of your keenest plea- 
sures, and what was at first difficult will not only 
become facile, but even full of inspiration and joy- 
ousness to you. 

This general part of our subject we cannot 
leave, without a word more about the wearisomeness 
of mental toil. Those who perform the most intel- 
lectual labor are commonly those who least speak 
of its fatiguing them. But if one is exhausted in 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 255 

such a way, it is not usually, when the thing does 
really occur, the amount of work done that causes 
the sense of fatigue so much as the associations of 
the mind with it. He who loves his work not only 
finds it light, but also finds himself ever fresh and 
ready for more. How different is a walk for the 
sake of mere exercise and as an unwelcome duty, 
from the same walk enlivened all the way with 
thoughts of some pleasing object to be gained by 
it, or with the gladsome companionship and con- 
verse of a cherished friend ! What wonders of fa- 
tigue can a frail mother encounter, in the care by 
day and night for weeks of a sick child, for whom 
no outlay of strength and money and time seems 
too precious, provided only she be hopeful and 
cheerful in her efforts and not anxious and care- 
worn. It is the wear and tear of men's own fretful 
thoughts that exhaust them in their work, instead 
of that work itself: like nausea at sea which is 
said to be when continued rather a mental than 
bodily difficulty in its origin, arising from the con- 
stant resistance of the mind to the motion of the 
boat, as in the case of vertigo to those afflicted by 
it in a swing. All the exhilaration and physical 
profit of a sport is taken away from a child, the 
moment that he feels that it has ceased to be a 
sport and is a duty. In the German language, ac- 
cordingly, our mental states and experiences are 



256 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR, 

truthfully described by tbe use of reflexive verbs to 
express them., as self-originated : our doubts and 
fears, our joys and sorrows. Let then the student 
be ever vigorously at work, and not only accept the 
law of work calmly, as a necessity to which he must 
submit, but much more, joyously, as one whose 
wisdom and profit he sees and admires. 

4thly. He must maintain at all times the most 
careful, scientific treatment possible of his body. 

The body occupies indeed a high relation to the 
soul, as the outward form of so august an inhabit- 
ant. " Ashes to ashes," we say of the body when 
dead ; but the great God, " who dwelleth not in 
temples made with hands," and " whom the Heaven 
of heavens cannot contain," Himself calls it when 
alive '' His temple." Without health the finest 
intellect and the largest, purest, most godly and 
godlike heart are, with like certainty, limited in 
the sphere of their action and fearfully shorn of 
their power in it. The men who have wrought a 
sublime, abiding work in their age, have been with 
great uniformity men of abounding health. A 
man of habitually strong nerves, lively sensibilities, 
elastic spirits, energetic impulses and ever-conscious 
force of muscle, feeling, thought and will : what a 
giant is he prepared to be, in either action or en- 
durance ! How can he ever drink, as others can- 
not, with perpetual joyousness, as from an over- 



THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 257 

flowing cup, of tlie sweet influences of earth and 
of heaven ; and how can he pour forth the treas- 
ures of his own heart in a strong tide of Hving, 
loving feeling upon others ! No one has a right to 
indulge in any hahits, acts, feelings, negligences or 
ventures, that can in any way impair or jeopard his 
highest health, except for reasons that God Him- 
self will sanction as heing demanded in His ser- 
vice. 

The body is exquisitely constructed, both as a 
wondrous living organism by itself, and as a com- 
plicated assemblage of adaptations for the wants 
and uses of its indwelling inhabitant. It is the 
finest piece of divine mechanism upon earth, and 
the highest form of material beauty witnessed by 
mortal, if not by angelic, eyes. That great Archi- 
tect who constructs all organized forms according 
to perfect geometric principles and proportions, and 
who makes all even inorganic substances not of 
simj)les, but always of difi'erent elements mingled 
together, and that, in each case, with the most mi- 
nutely exact uniformity of weight, in every element 
of the compound : He has blended in the forma- 
tion of the human body all the highest mechanical 
contrivances and chemical combinations and agen- 
cies, to be found among the earthly demonstrations 
of His skill. Not only in its construction, but also 
in the daily voluntary and involuntary use of its 



258 THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

various elements and functions, law has one of its 
highest thrones of heauty upon earth. Must then 
laws be carefully studied and obeyed, in working a 
piece of human mechanism made of but few parts, 
and those coarse and heavy, and will a little care- 
lessness here, as in the handling of an optical in- 
strument, chronometer or electrical machine, defeat 
all the ends that might otherwise be compassed and 
even ruin the mechanism itself .? And how much 
more will the human body, so manifold in its com- 
plications and of such a delicate tempering of all 
its inward essences and elements together into one 
strangely united whole, suffer damage from abuse 
or neglect ? But who seems to have any strong, 
mastering sense of responsibility, about the occa- 
sional or even the chronic states of the body ? 
Whose body is not marked with many wounds from 
needless and wanton thrusts, in moments of excite- 
ment and folly, at its tender framework, inwardly 
or outwardly ? No man has a better chance for 
long life than the student : yea, rather, none so 
good, if he rightly improves it ; and none can get 
such a rich variety of all kinds of physical enjoy- 
ment as he, if he desires them. 

The conditions of health and vigor are few, but 
they are imperative ; and it is a maxim not only 
of human law but also of the divine, that " igno- 
rance excuses no one." They are also all easily as- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 259 

certainable, and God has placed the privilege of 
health almost as absolutely within the reach of 
every one who will keep its plain appointed rules, 
as He has the opportunity also of a residence for- 
ever with Him in the Upper City to all who will 
seek for it. It is a terrific demonstration indeed of 
the gross amount of sins against the body commit- 
ted by each generation, that its average life, instead 
of being, as it might and should be, a half century 
and more, should be shortened down to a point but 
little beyond the half of so brief a period. In the 
fact that our octogenarians are usually, a very large 
proportion of them at least, those whose health was 
originally feeble, and that for many years, and 
who therefore, in order to enjoy any health, had to 
husband the little that they did possess, we see on 
a small scale what might be witnessed in this world, 
on a large one, if all, weak and strong alike, sought 
zealously to have a conscience entirely void of of- 
fence in this matter, before God. A piece of glass 
can be kept as long with care, as a piece of iron ; 
and, if kept for a long period, it surely proves that 
the iron might have been kept, as long and well. 

One or two s^Decific hints are all that can be in- 
dulged in here. One of them is this : the student 
must be a moderate eater. He that eats like a 
working-man may toil with his hands, but not with 
his head. The habit of eating very slowly, and 



260 THE TKUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

filling up the space thus allowed one's self with 
plenty of mastication on the one hand, and of light 
cheerful conversation on the other, would reveal to 
many not only new pleasure in eating, but also a 
new enjoyment of health. Light meals,* especially 
at the end of the day, when the powers of digestion 
are most incapable of mastering difficulties, are 
wonderful helpers to health and cheerfulness and 
clear thought, and even to religious feeling. A man 
of thought, whose pleasures are so many of them 
subjective in their source, as are a scholar's, should 
find no difficulty in constant abstinence from a full 
diet, or from one of doubtful quality. But without 
formal intentions and efforts concerninsr this matter, 
he will be quite sure to go astray : as a life of study 
is quite as provocative of a strong appetite for food 
in an adult, as schoolboy days have ever been cele- 
brated for producing among the young. Most lit- 
erary men accordingly eat too much ; and hence 

* The word supper has come by modern perverseness to bear, as a 
heavy meal, in its distinctive sense, exactly the opposite meaning to 
its original signification. Sop, soup, sup and supper are all of one 
root, and refer to the use of a light broth for the evening meal. Mod- 
ern invention, not to call it modern depravity, has substituted for 
such a simple, healthy, hygienic habit the custom of eating, in cake 
and sweetmeats, the most concentrated food that is used through all 
the day, and so prepared as to tempt one by its agreeableuess to eat 
more than he needs of any sort of food, and that when the stomach 
is under its greatest disability. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 261 

comes in such cases, and not from a mere sedentary 
occupation as so often supposed, that special class 
of temptations before which men of quiet, retired 
habits of life have so many times fallen. A full 
bodily habit as such is favorable to no high attain- 
ments, in heart * or mind. Some when about to 
make a great mental effort feed themselves to the 
full with highly-seasoned food, so as to stimulate 
the brain the better to action : as Pitt is said to 
have done with frequency ; and who died accord- 
ingly, as might have been expected, of apoplexy, in 
his early manhood. Others in the same way seek 
excitation from stimulating drinks, instead of the 
stimulus of strong, healthy, holy thought. All 
such expedients are of short-lived efficacy ; and the 
disposition to resort to them shows, that both the 
mind and heart of him who does it have lost the 
virgin-purity of their own conscious duty and 
power. 

On one other point also justice to the bodily in- 
terests of the Christian student demands a word 
here : the use in any form of the filthy and poison- 
ous drug, tobacco. Well does every observing 
teacher know, who is not himself caught in its 
snare, that it is a wonderful ruiner of health and 
character in the young. In one class of cases, it 

* Let him who doubts this consult the following passages of 
Scripture : Jeremiah v. 7, 8 ; Ezeluel xvi. 49. 



262 THE TRUE CHEISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

operates to deaden the vital energies and to make 
tlie mental perceptions, the memory and the will, 
all slow and feeble in their action. In those of 
another style of temperament it unsettles the nerves, 
so as to constantly excite the mind to disorderly 
conduct. Could a true summation be made of all 
the evil influences of this revolting habit on the 
health and longevity of each generation that uses 
it, the sight would be one for Rightfulness like a 
vision of those pyramids of skulls that savage 
princes in Asia in former days sometimes delighted 
in piling up, at the end of a life spent in extermi- 
nating their species, as their proof that they had 
not been remiss in their hellish work. But the 
ruin of health by the use of tobacco is but a faint 
type of the greater ruin, occasioned to the charac- 
ter and intellect of those who use it. To the young 
especially, the elements of whose bodily growth and 
strength are in such a state of flux, and so im- 
pressible by slight causes, for good or evil, the use 
of such an active poison is exceedingly injurious. 
Teachers, by an extended and constant comparison 
of many youthful constitutions, and the habits of 
those possessing them, have experiences and con- 
victions on this subject that fall but little within 
the range of a physician's observation. They also 
often see the evil effects of its use by adults, in the 
sallow faces, stinted forms and languid airs of their 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 263 

pupils ; who thus bear about with them the heredi- 
tary marks of their father's folly, and that in grow- 
ing fulness of manifestation, as child after child of 
such a parent comes under their care. The devo- 
tee to tobacco voluntarily unmans his own will of 
all its native, divinely-endowed sovereignty over the 
other elements of his nature, by his self-subjection 
to such a habit. He who once felt that he could do 
any thing great or good, however difficult, now suc- 
cumbs, with paralytic self-prostration, before this 
idol-habit, and says that he cannot relinquish it, al- 
though he is conscious of its injuriousness. 

He who conforms to the principles here advo- 
cated may be sure of being able to realize eight 
hours daily of earnest study, at the lowest calcula- 
tion ; not only without damage to his bodily 
strength, but also with positive advantage to it. 
Study is a thing of zeal : but zeal does not brook 
the idea of having time doled out to it sparingly, 
any more than does avarice gold, or ambition, hon- 
or. 

5thly. He must appropriate to himself, natu- 
rally, thankfully and joyously, all the aids, stimu- 
lations, treasures and pleasures, which God has ex- 
pressly and bountifully provided for him, as his 
portion of good cheer under the sun. 

Nature, providence and life are all contrived, 
with superabounding appliances for such a result, 



264 THE TEUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

not only to the one idea, objectively to them, of de- 
veloping man into all " the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily," but also to the idea, subjectively too, on 
their part, of furnishing him with every resource 
for strength, refreshment and triumph, that he can 
need or desire to find in the surrounding universe. 
Our powers of attainment are made vast enough, 
not only to take in that heritage of " all things " 
which the Scriptures declare to be " ours ; " but 
even God Himself, the All in all, to whom all the 
worlds that He has made are but bubbles, floating 
upon the ocean- surface of His being. If any one's 
heart therefore is empty of living waters, it is be- 
cause he himself has broken the pitcher ; while 
standing by the fountain overflowing from above. 
God has given us kindly many wants, that they 
might be all so many natural voices within the re- 
cesses of our being, crying after Him : so that our 
very wants are purposely constituted, as links to 
bind us more consciously and strongly to Himself, 
their willing and their sole supply. 

He is always in the lavishness of his beneficence, 
under perpetual restraint in its outflow : never as 
gracious as he would be : for want of preparation 
for his benefits. Let then each one open his whole 
nature to the manifold streams of his bounty ; and 
the very gladsomeness of God's nature will run 
through, and overrun all the deep and many water- 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 265 

courses of his soul. If any one upon earth ought 
to be a man of buoyant spirits, and of vaulting 
moods of mind, with the very light of Heaven al- 
ways burning brightly in his heart and eye, it is the 
Christian scholar. For he sees not merely the ex- 
terior of things, as others do only, but also their 
deep interior, for which all that is without was 
made, as a mere form for the precious contents with- 
in. He is a thinker, searching after all hidden 
things ; and his eye is trained to look beneath the 
surface and behind the vail. And what numberless 
springs of perpetual exhilaration has God estab- 
lished in his nature and circumstances, for the daily 
excitement and refreshment of his heart, in the 
gratifications of bodily sense, the beauties of nature, 
the hilariousness of children, the activities of busi- 
ness, the discoveries of the age, the march of pub- 
lic events, the intercourse of friends, the pleasures 
of thought and of personal improvement in knowl- 
edge, character, power and usefulness, the glory, 
honor and beauty of a life of service to God and of 
good to man, and all the deep, sweet satisfactions 
of faith and hope and worship, in the inner sanc- 
tuary of the soul. 

And is such an one to sit down, weary and way- 
worn, on the pathway of life, on which prophets and 
apostles and the Son of God Himself have walked, 
amid many persecutions, with exulting footsteps, 
12 



266 THE TKUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 

towards the skies ? Is tliis the man to be found 
moping over the stage of this world, everywhere red 
with the martyr-blood of the noble men that have 
been here before him, with heavy eyes and drawling 
speech, as if nowhere able to find any thing that 
can captivate or interest his leaden soul ! 

Some restrain by theory the natural leapings of 
the heart, whether in the playfulness of sport or in 
energy of action, towards things without, as well as 
all its own natural gushicgs up of life within. 
More, by cold neglect of both God and themselves, 
allow the garden of the soul, made to be at all 
times full of the flowers and fruits and sweet wa- 
ters and reviving airs and songs of the paradise 
above : to become a wilderness of weeds, full of all 
dark, damp places and noxious miasms and hideous 
noises. Joy, God made to be the very pulse of im- 
mortality ; and " the joy of the Lord is our 
strength." Let then the scholar delight himself 
and honor his God, by always drinking to the full 
of the cup of sweets which God has lovingly placed 
in his hands. And let him not wonder if he loses 
his health and spirits, and reason even, in under- 
taking to pursue his own pathway, ascetically, 
through life, rejecting, under the holy name of 
prudence or religion, the natural aids and stimula- 
tions with which God has purposely endowed him 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 267 

for the successful conduct of his interests and his 
duties. 

In the view taken thus far of the true Christian 
Scholar, he has stood before our thoughts, rather in 
the strength and beauty of his ripened manhood, 
than in the more early and formative period of his 
history. And yet it has been our constant en- 
deavor, to remember also the wants of those who 
are just beginning to open their eyes, consciously, 
upon the sphere and work of true scholarship, as 
they are, and who, seeing them in their real aspects, 
yet firmly if not eagerly have cast in their lot 
thither for life. A thought or two to this class of 
readers and we have done. 

Let the student at school or in college cultivate, 
at all times, the most genial, honorable, manly style 
of feeling and conduct towards his associates. It 
is often said that boys, not having learned those re- 
finements of duplicity or disguise which their sen- 
iors are often so expert in assuming, under the 
names of etiquette, policy or shrewdness, show the 
depravity of human nature in deeper and darker 
streaks than others. Certain is it that the current 
inward history, at the present time, of most of our 
colleges would not enable us to make any improve- 
ment in the statement concerning them. How 
many systematic and traditionary meannesses are 
rife in them ! Close, selfish, contemptuous and 



268 THE TKUE CHKISTIAN SCHOLAE. 

contemptible cliques abound. Some of a class-sort 
and others pertaining to secret societies. Pasqui- 
nades, burlesque-scbemes and ribald songs, aimed 
at tlie students and professors alike, are printed and 
circulated even on public occasions devoted to tbe 
interests of the college ; and the atmosphere of 
many of our colleges is hot all the time with class- 
pretensions, society-rivalries, personal bickerings, 
low and even dangerous tricks on the more simple, 
and all the terrors, at times, of organized rowdyism. 
In what style now should the true Christian scholar 
deport himself, amid such scenes ? He has cer- 
tainly a rare opportunity for showing the heroic 
beauty of real self-respect, and of gentle and gener- 
ous conduct towards all around him. Let him scorn 
all sympathy with every form of social selfishness, 
however gilded. If in after-life he would be a true 
Christian philanthropist, or patriot, or even gentle- 
man, let him be careful to possess the same spirit 
and enact the same deeds now. For after-life, like 
after-growth, is but a larger development of the 
initial forms and processes which preceded it. 

Let him in every way escape the first establish- 
ment in his heart of that evil egoism, in which one 
contents himself always with walking in robes be- 
fore the glass of his own consciousness, and is care- 
less of every thing that does not pertain, in some 
form, to himself or his imase. 



THE TRUE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR. 269 

He who realizes, whether young or old, the 
character of the true Christian student in this 
world, in his own person, will wear a crown of 
honor here below, and a crown of glory above in 
heaven. 



V. 



THE CONNECTION OF THE HIGHER CHRIS- 
TIAN EDUCATION WITH THE PROGRESS 
AND PRIVILEGES OF THE PEOPLE. 



V. 



THE CONNECTION OF THE HIGHER CHRIS- 
TIAN EDUCATION WITH THE PROGRESS 
AND PRIVILEGES OF THE PEOPLE. 

The people : the good of the people : the pro- 
gress and privileges of the people : these precious 
phrases jingle in many ears, like mere words of 
cant : they have been so often and so cruelly used, 
to adorn the ostentatious but broken promises of 
demagogues. And yet they are the chosen watch- 
words of Christianity, and of all men who are 
really aiming at the advancement of the species, ha 
whatever nation and under whatever name. One 
of the most beautiful and touching records of 
Christ's felt influence upon our common humanity, 
as he came in direct visible contact with it, espe- 
cially as contrasted with the fact of his crucifixion 
by a wicked minority of the religious and civil oflS- 
cials of the day banded together against him, is one 
indicating the hearty responsiveness of the masses 

to whom he spoke of his own love and of the 
12* 



274 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Father's, and showed it to them in his works : the 
simple statement which so many read, without ever 
feehng its deep sweet heart-sense ; in which he 
who was " the Desire of all nations " was practi- 
cally recognized as such : " the common people 
heard him gladly." Here was earth's according 
strain of feeling, in harmony with the song of the 
angels to the shepherds : " Grlory to G-od, in the 
highest ; peace on earth and good will to men ; " 
and in unconscious but appreciative answer to 
Christ's own joyous statement of the divine charac- 
ter and signature of his work, in the world : " to 
the poor the gospel is preached." Those melodies, 
which are the great common beatings of the hu- 
man heart voiced to the ear, and which every one 
therefore instinctively loves to hear and loves to 
sing, have in them beyond all others the soul of 
music. That poetry, whose strains awaken the 
most numerous echoes in the greatest multitude of 
listening ears young and old, ignorant and learned, 
contains in such a fact the proof that it possesses 
most of what is truly beautiful or sublime. Those 
elements of our being, in which we all agree, are 
far higher and nobler than any in which we differ. 
That style of religion, therefore, not only but also 
of education, which is most adapted to every man's 
wants, and whose results combine at the most 
points and in the most decisive ways^ with the 



AND THE PKOGKESS OF THE PEOPLE. 275 

greatest progress of the age and of the race, is most 
true and heavenly, hoth in its outward bearings and 
in its own inward nature. 

Diffusiveness of every thing good to the widest 
possible limits is the genius of Christianity. Its 
very life is love. Giving is the spirit of all its aims 
and movements. Its perpetual history is perpetual 
benefaction. So leavened has modern society be- 
come with its influence, in all forms and directions, 
that the utmost possible popularization of every ad- 
vantage is the felt tendency of the times, in every 
quarter. " Knowledge," now, therefore, " runs to 
and fro," both by the impulse of those who have it 
to bestow, and the importunate invitation of those 
who long to receive it. The poor are princes now 
in power and privilege : " the child dies an hundred 
years old." 

Not by chance, or for fashion's sake, has the 
title of this closing essay of the series here pre- 
sented been selected ; but from glad sympathy with 
its spirit. That high truth placed by God's own 
hand in ours, as one of the great standards of hu- 
man faith and feeling appointed by Him for our 
guidance, that " no man liveth to himself and no 
man dieth to himself," we do not and cannot gaze 
at as a stern necessity, from which we would fain 
escape, or as a mere beautiful abstraction, to be ad- 
mired for a little while and then forgotten. We 



276 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

rejoice in it, on tlie contrary, as one of Heaven's 
own banners, and would bear it exultingly over all 
the earth. 

It has passed into a proverb, from Heathen lips 
to Christian and from one age to another, that " the 
voice of the people is the voice of God," Their 
real voice is His voice : not indeed their vote al- 
ways ; although this, when they comprehend the 
true issues at stake, is quite sure to be full of the 
fire and flash of that common sense, which is in 
man's heart the glow of the same light of truth, 
that burns with dazzling brightness forever in the 
bosom of Grod. But their uttered wants, their uni- 
versal cry or sigh or desire is indeed His voice. 
That universal cry is for light. Their universal 
want, uttered or unexpressed, is love. He who ad- 
dresses himself with all his energies to meet it, ele- 
vates his own nature, in thus striving to elevate 
theirs ; and, as the addition of human labor to any 
of the forms or elements of matter is what gives 
them their value, and the connection of man with 
any thing upon earth is what gives it its impor- 
tance : so, the effort to promote the greatest possi- 
ble good of the greatest number is the rule of the 
highest virtue ; and the tendency to such a result 
is the sublimest tendency of any moral action. 

To a careful, earnest, religious spectator of the 
world's condition and history, two great facts stand 



AND THE PKOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 277 

forth at once in strong colors and startling propor- 
tions. The first is this : that the world has come 
very slowly to its present incomplete stage of de- 
velopment. Why, he exclaims, such short and 
measured steps of progress. The present civiliza- 
tion of the world is the grand resultant of the ex- 
periences, labors and attainments of countless mil- 
lions, who have lived their brief day upon the earth, 
and left behind them each, in departing from it, 
their share of determinative influence upon its for- 
tune and its fate. And how mournfully small is 
the aggregate product of so much active human 
life ! The other great fact that astonishes and sad- 
dens him, is, that there is now everywhere such a 
frightful amount of talent and energy lying utterly 
unemployed in the community. The vast intel- 
lectual and moral inertia of the race at large : 
this is the great astounding fact. How large the 
harvest and how few the laborers ! While the pos- 
sibilities of human life and of human nature are 
so splendid, the ever-growing wonder is that so few 
seem to feel or even to see it. Not a thousandth 
or millionth part indeed of the latent spiritual 
forces of society has ever been continually, or occa- 
sionally for any considerable period of time, em- 
ployed on the ends or means of human progress. 
The machinery of society, it is true, is ponderous 
enough : but it stands for the most part entirely 



278 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

still, or turns but a few slow heavy rounds, meas- 
ured by centuries, instead of years, and often, yes 
always bitherto, backwards in every country sooner 
or later as well as forwards : so that civilization has 
ever been migratory, and tbe genius of liberty, like 
that • of letters, has been from the first a bird of 
passage in this world, as well as a bird of paradise. 
Mankind at large are marching, and in all ages 
have marched, over this earthly stage of their be- 
ing, like an orchestra provided from above with all 
bright sweet instruments, tuned in themselves to 
God's everlasting praise, which however they have 
borne unused through all the slow, moody, march 
of life : a great, silent orchestra, trailing in weary 
languor along the highway of time, bearing even 
their privileges as burdens, instead of moving in 
joyous triumph with loud-voiced trumpets and viols, 
in a chorus of hallelujahs, onwards and upwards to 
their Father's house above. 

If ever the world is to become, as it surely is, 
for such is the promise, one wide-spread garden of 
delights, full of the habitations of peace and praise, 
instead of the habitations of cruelty as now, so 
great a change is to be wrought by the diffusion 
everywhere of the benefits and blessings of the 
Higher Christian Education. The widest range of 
both the powers and results of Christianity is that 



AND THE PROGKESS OF THE PEOPLE. 279 

lying within the sphere of its educational resources 
and influences. 

The following points are those most worthy of 
discussion here : — 

I. The true limits of the theory of general edu- 
cation, both as to the numbers to be reached by it, 
and the proper style of their education. 

II. The connection of the Higher Education, 
specifically, with all the lower forms of general ed- 
ucation. 

III. The necessity and beauty of its being, in 
all its influence upon the masses, thoroughly and 
insjDiringly Christian. 

IV. Some of the chief results already accom- 
plished by Christian Scholarship in the world. 

I. What then is the true theory of general ed- 
ucation ? 

Every man has in him a nature worthy of the 
highest possible improvement. However humble 
the lot of any individual, or however menial his 
employment, there is in his very manhood a beam 
of light divine that attracts the gaze of angels, and 
which therefore should not fall upon our eyes in 
vain. How is every thing external to man overes- 
timated in this world, and all that is inwardly vital 
to his essence or development, as a man, grossly 



280 THE HIGHEE CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

underestimated ! So great is the soul of each, one, 
and so many and so precious are the germs, now 
full of life within it, of a vast unfolding future, 
that the more difficult, hereditary, permanent or 
organic, the obstructions in the way of the true and 
enlarged culture of all its elements and resources, 
the more should the state and the church and the 
plans of individual beneficence and enterprise con- 
centrate their separate and collected energy upon 
their removal. It is often said and truly that the 
first senses of all words were physical, and that all 
their intellectual and moral senses are but fisrura- 
tive. Alas ! that the moderns have so little, in 
practice, outtravelled the ancients, in their mate- 
rialistic use of language, as of the elements of per- 
sonal experience and of active life, of which it is 
the reflex image. Earthly-mindedness is a sin of 
far wider applications than most suppose ; and no- 
where has its blighting power been more felt, than 
in every department of the great work of education. 
The consciences of but few are at all alive to the 
claims of the uneducated masses, for the removal 
of the incubus of ignorance that is upon them, by 
the helpful beneficence of those, who have received 
from former generations a better heritage than 
they. 

Those who are educated for unprofessional em- 
ployments are, with scarcely an exception, educated 



AND THE PKOGEESS OF THE PEOPLE. 281 

only so far and in such a way, as is supposed need- 
ful or desirable for their best success, in procuring 
the material advantages of life. Of the little num- 
ber who enter upon the courses of the Higher Edu- 
cation, but few ever obtain any such earnest in- 
spiring sense of their exalted privileges, as to aim, 
with full determined perseverance, at those results 
which are worthy of such a designation ; while the 
small minority, who may in a liberal construction 
of the phrase be included among those who have 
obtained a classical education, nearly all of tliem 
choose pursuits in the end that possess the one daz- 
zling, but petty and perishable, element of lucre. 
In opposition to all such perversions of humanity, 
we maintain the right lodged in every man's na- 
ture, as divine : the patent royal of his birthright 
as a child of God : to the benefits of the highest 
possible education of all his faculties. It is often 
said that every man has an incontrovertible right to 
subsistence, and in an emergency may steal with 
perfect moral impunity rather than die. But how 
much more imperative is the right of each one to 
all that light, which God has given to others, indi- 
vidually or collectively, on purpose that they should 
bear it to every creature through all the world. 
Capital now has its foot on the neck of labor, be- 
cause it is uneducated. Poverty also for the same 
reason remains too often hereditary for many gene- 



282 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

rations. Labor itself, which is necessary and hon- 
orable in all its innocent variations and degrees, 
becomes without education a mere brute employ- 
ment of muscular energy, more or less intellectual- 
ized according to the different amount of native 
mental strength possessed by various individuals, 
or the haphazard increase made of it, by the force 
of the fortunate accidents or incidents of their 
earthly lot. Labor without thought, as its source 
and guide, is like a blanched rose that has lost its 
beauty with its fragrance ; and it is changed from 
a blessing, as it is in itself, into a practical curse, 
as it is employed. Labor without thought, as its 
inspiration, is, not merely not work as play, as all 
true toil becomes to a great man or a good one ; 
but it is also work without play. There is not an 
artisan, the daily product of whose hands would 
not be ennobled, as truly as is an artist's, by the 
high education of all his faculties as a man, in re- 
ceiving a deeper impress of his own best thoughts 
and feelings upon it. But manual labor it is said 
would become in such cases generally distasteful. 
It might indeed justly to all those, who are called 
in the noble gifts of their nature to a higher work, 
than to make shoes or coats or hats for other men, 
whose position above theirs is simply the accident 
of greater pecuniary means, but whose natures in- 
dicate that they should be cobblers rather than 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 283 

themselves. In the divine economy of the social 
state, some have leisure purposely allowed them for 
the use of their time, in high and noble forms of 
study, research and discovery, that they may dis- 
tribute beneficently unto others the knowledge that 
they have gained for themselves. But none cer- 
tainly belong to the class appointed of God to such 
privileges, who, by neglecting them when offered, 
prove themselves unworthy of so exalted a position. 
Multitudes there are now in all the professions, who 
openly declare themselves by their voluntary tor- 
pidity of mind entirely unworthy of any place in 
them : men of low aims, the downward bent of 
whose tastes shows that they are factitiously placed 
above their level, and occupy their forced position 
to the great detriment of society. And so, on the 
contrary, multitudes follow the plough and wield 
the sledge, and are never known to be any thing 
more than clever workmen in wood, or dirt or iron, 
who might have inspired attending crowds with 
their eloquence, or swayed the counsels of the 
State with their wisdom, or led forth the church to 
victory upon victory through all the earth. 

The greatest possible diffusion of true educa- 
tion in its highest forms, for reach and power, is, 
in conjunction with the utmost possible diffusion 
of religion, the greatest want of society. These 
combine harmoniously in the style of their influence 



284 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

and results both to individuals and the community 
at large. True education when generally diffused 
levels the elements of society both upwards and 
downwards. Those who gravitate downwards, with 
their own free will, should not be held up by official 
and ecclesiastical supports, at an elevation for which 
they are not fitted ; while those who are capaci- 
tated to soar in their tastes and aims and achieve- 
ments, who have in them instincts all pointing up- 
wards, struggling for free air and free motion in it, 
ought to have an opportunity to find their ap- 
pointed range of activity and effort. 

Popular education is then, not only one of the 
greatest of all interests and duties of any commu- 
nity, but also one ever-present in its claims, in ref- 
erence both to voluntary movements in its own be- 
half, and also to arrangements and expenditures 
which can be compassed only by the State. Its 
elements, likewise, are to be the widest possible 
universality in its scope, and at the same time, all 
such preparatives as promise the greatest possible 
fulness of results. 

Not to be misunderstood, let it be premised 
that the elevation of the mass, of which so much 
is said as the ultimatum of social enterprise, is to 
be but a mass of individual elevations. The riches 
of mental energy and attainment possessed by each 
person form, when aggregated, the great original 



AND THE PKOGKESS OF THE PEOPLE. 285 

capital of society, the wliole of which the perpetua- 
tion and enlargement of its own privileges demand 
that it should always employ and improve, as much 
as possible. The largest, fullest and best education 
of every man in each age is the first term, on all 
lines of iipward and onward movement, of which 
the second and resultant term is the greatest possi- 
ble progress of mankind, in every generation. The 
man accordingly wh(? has the opportunity to raise 
himself to loftier degrees of intellectual and moral 
culture, and either rejects or squanders such a priv- 
ilege, is not merely a dullard, but a traitor also to 
his race. He throws away his own birthright, and 
that of others also in untold numbers in his own 
age and in the procession of the ages that are to 
follow it, whom he might have directly elevated, or 
at least gladdened with the light of his own beau- 
tiful example, as a star that would never set with 
its inspiring and guiding influences in their horizon. 
Society is but a grand, divinely-constituted corpora- 
tion, covering all countries and ages ; in which 
every member owes by the very implications of its 
constitution the most zealous devotion to the com- 
mon interests of all. To one who feels the power 
of this conception, the voiceless centuries, as they 
pass solemnly by, one after the other, upon the 
stage of history, stand before his view, imploring, 
with an agony of mute eloquence in their very 



286 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

looks, the strongest and warmest thoughts, efforts 
and prayers of every one upon earth, for himself and 
for those around him, as well as for all who are to 
come after him in long succession. 

But while such are the duties and responsibili- 
ties of individuals to the community at large, so- 
ciety also itself owes great and high duties to them. 
Duties are mutual ; and, the higher the powers and 
resources of either one of the related parties, the 
higher its duties to the other. The duties of the 
State to the individual not only cover the held of 
personal property, life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness, but also those nobler interests of personal 
culture, which, although so great in themselves, 
governments have yet hitherto so perseveringly ig- 
nored. Ceesar understands that he must defend his 
borders from foreign invasion and therefore provides 
fleets and armaments, which, after possessing them, 
he has usually shown quite as great readiness to 
use for purposes of offense as of defense. And 
what expenditures does the Demon of war exact of 
all governments ? Every ship of the line repre- 
sents in itself and in its outfit, it is said, half a 
million of dollars. What a splendid university 
with large privileges would such a sum provide ! 
and what a great constructive influence for good, 
instead of one destructive to human life and hap- 
piness, would such an appropriation of it ensure ! 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 287 

It would be repeated on its own ground in all time 
to generations of pupils succeeding one another, 
while the world should last, and, through each gen- 
eration itself, over all the earth to multitudes around 
them, whom their lives and labors should reach for 
good. Its very name university, if objectively in- 
terpreted, would be a symbol of its benign bear- 
ing, compared with the Tartarean names, that are 
generally so aptly chosen to denominate those great 
floating arsenals of death, over which yet, although 
costing so much money in fact and so much blood, 
in designed if not probable prospect, not only the 
State but the community also rejoice with national 
pride. 

The ends of the Higher Education are many 
and great. Private resources cannot of themselves 
procure them : they must be furnished by the State. 
And the State should do it liberally, as a compen- 
sation for the services which it receives from edu- 
cated men in two ways : one general, in the help 
that they furnish to the stability of the social state 
as such ; and the other specific, in the fact that 
nearly all the managers of the affairs of state have 
been themselves modelled and equipped for their 
stations in such institutions. The State should 
therefore also favor and assist the higher institu- 
tions of the land, as a matter of its own protection 
and honor in the future. As in regular military 



288 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

academies are prepared the officers of the army and 
the navy, so from our colleges and universities are to 
come in all time the officers of State. The advan- 
tages of the Higher Education should then be facile 
to every one, as, from the great community of all 
men, are to he developed to the highest eminence 
under proper private and public training, the few 
who are really capacitated and called of God to 
guide, and by their guidance to bless, the rest of 
mankind. And, while we would not have them 
presented to the poor, as if they were conferring a 
favor upon the State to receive them and much 
more to accept a gratuitous support in doing so ; as 
if universities themselves and the cause that they 
represent were reduced to straits and would beg 
even beggars to pity them ; yet every bar to the 
aspiring and energetic and hopeful should be re- 
moved, who desire to obtain a true and large edu- 
cation, and, at the same time, every stimulating 
and inspiring encouragement should be furnished 
them to pursue a high course of personal self-im- 
provement. 

Our present college-system has grown up to be 
what it is, under the pressure of our felt wants as a 
people, and has in its general outlines the variety 
and practical adaptedness to the demands of pro- 
fessional and active life in this country, that the 
progressive experience of two centuries has sug- 



AND THE PKOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 289 

gested. Its great defects are want of breadth, as 
well as of elevation, as a piece of educational struc- 
ture, and still more the inward want of that living 
enthusiasm and energy in its management, which 
can come only from those two grand elements, high 
intellectual culture and glowing personal religion, 
combined, and intensified in their action, one with 
the other. Our colleges are manj of them but 
mere academies ; and not a few are second-rate at 
that. As some say, they have been multiplied be- 
yond all proper bounds ; but so think not we. In 
the State of New York, it is true that there are 
not only two in its cliief city ; but that also in 
every important city, or in its immediate neighbor- 
hood, throughout the State from Albany to Buf- 
falo, there is a college existing in full form, or else 
one either just coming into being or just going out 
of it. The number in our whole country, now 
claiming to be alive and to deserve public atten- 
tion, is somewhere near a thousand. The argu- 
ment brought against them, by hasty reasoners upon 
their past history and their future prospects, is the 
same as that used in reference to the multiplica- 
tion of different denominational enterprises in small 
towns : that their very number weakens the working 
force of them all ; and that therefore the strength of 
their own resources, and of public feeling towards 
them, should be concentrated upon a few, which 
13 



290 THE HIGHEE CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

miglit be in consequence greatly enlarged and per- 
fected. No ! a thousand times no ! let tliem be 
multiplied still moi-e, as surely tliey will be, from 
tbe action of local and denominational causes, if 
no other ; and let their courses of study be ex- 
tended and elevated more and more. Private en- 
thusiasm and enterprise, and quite generally those 
of a patriotic and religious source, have founded 
them, with a wise and earnest forecast of the fu- 
ture. The real fault to be found with them does 
not respect their number but their quality, as well 
as the mistake so generally made concerning their 
aj)propriate place and function, in the machinerj' of 
education. Our colleges, in their present type, 
which is truly adapted and American, should not 
be regarded : with the exception of two or three of 
the foremost, whose history, capabilities and locality 
admirably fit them for a full and facile transforma- 
tion into real universities : as answering, in their 
style of functions and resources, the style of our 
wants as a people. They should occupy relatively 
but the place of the German gymnasium, and 
should be perfected for such relations far beyond 
what they now are, in fulness and exactness of drill, 
as well as in the finish of the results obtained by 
their workmanship ; while over them should tower, 
story above story, the higher university-course of 
study, in which men, not boys as in the colleges, 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 291 

might ascend to the loftiest attainments, under skil- 
ful guides, in all the noblest departments of human 
philosophy, learning and industry. The scale of 
our educational facilities would thus become in ad- 
dition to our strictly professional schools four-fold : 
as described by common schools, academies or high 
schools, colleges and universities. One university 
at least should stand, like a pillar of light, in every 
State : the glory of the community and the con- 
stant object of its care : on which the watchful 
eyes of the State should be ever set, and to which 
its hand of bounty should always be extended. 
Bounty we have said, with all carefulness, instead 
of patronage : for such an institution patronizes the 
State far more than the State can patronize it. 

The university should thus be distinct entirely 
from the college, representing in completeness the 
higher forms of education, as such, and the higher 
facilities for obtaining them : so that its provisions 
should be all of the most ample and inviting kind, 
for those who have run with zeal and thoroughness 
the previous curriculum of college-life. None but 
men of really high scholarly attainments should 
have license to enter upon its privileges. Its gates 
should be practically so closed against all who 
have been idlers in their preliminary courses of 
study, by its inexorable requirements of a certain, 
high, specific style of preparation, that none but 



292 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

men of glowing, cultivated powers of mind should 
ever be found dwellins; within its sacred enclosure. 
Here, the topmost heights of science, philosophy, 
philology, criticism and taste should he eagerly 
traversed, by those who have the time and the dis- 
position to scale them. Here, faithful earnest 
guides should have their habitation, full of all large 
stories and legends even, if you will, about the 
wonders of the way, for those whose instinct and 
determination to climb, and in climbing to conquer, 
all the difficulties that lie before them, is unceasing 
and indomitable. 

The true university-course for this land and age 
should be no accidental or servile imitation of that 
existing in any part of Europe, and which has 
grown up there out of the soil of other climes and 
other ages, and of forms of government and of so- 
ciety altogether different in their elements, relations 
and demands from ours. It should be rather the 
product of our own land and of our own age, and 
full of the living spirit of the times. So conformed 
to our present actual condition and wants should it 
be, that it should seem not only to have been sug- 
gested, but required, by them. It should be in 
other words American and as much above, in the 
scope and height of its utilities, the institutions of 
the old world, as our style of government and of so- 
cial life is above theirs. 



A.ND THE PEOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 293 

Our colleges, also, we have said should be per- 
fected into a state of far higher disciplinary appli- 
ances and privileges. They should begin at a point 
at least midway in their present course : requiring 
a largo, deep and thorough style of preparation for 
entrance upon it, in previous academic qualifica- 
tions. Their chief drill should be drill in the study 
of language ; and the chosen field for it should 
cover both the ancient and modern languages, 
which should be thoroughly mastered in all their 
varied elements, grammatical and lexical, in every 
possible form of research, syntactical, philosophical, 
philological and rhetorical. Through six years the 
laborious student should be led, as on an average 
from eighteen to twenty-four years of age, through 
all the mazes of grammar, etymology, prosody and 
accentuation in the classical languages, as well as 
through the more comprehensive elements of criti- 
cism, logic and rhetoric, and all the higher princi- 
ples of both philosophic and eesthetic culture in the 
most effective and attractive forms in which they 
occur in both ancient and modern authorship ; as 
well as, for a proper commingling of the abstract 
with the concrete, through a wide accompanying 
range of mathematical and scientific exploration 
and analysis. The great objects ever to be kept in 
view should be twofold : the most complete and 
harmonious discipline of all the mental powers as 



294 THE HIGHEE CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

such, and the careful habituation of the mind from 
the first to great activity and energy, in the highest 
of all formis of mental productiveness, the art of 
original composition. 

Our academies and high schools need also, like 
our colleges, thorough renovation and enlargement 
in their courses of study and instruction. To what 
a lamentable degree have they fallen into the hands 
of novices only, who, in their unripe manhood, have 
been also quite unfledged for the work that they 
have assumed, by any original taste or special prep- 
aration for it. For mere temporary purposes have 
they undertaken it ; and therefore it has lost its 
attractions to their dull eyes, when those objects 
have been gained. There is nothing more farcical, 
and therefore, since the interests involved are so 
tremendous, there is no social abuse more great, at 
least in our Northern States and in respectable so- 
ciety, than the present prevalent mode of conduct- 
ing academical instruction in our country. Colleges 
cannot advance their requirements as fast as some 
of them would, because of the continued low tide 
of influences and results in the preparatory schools. 
Few of all who enter the academies of the land 
ever acquire while there a taste for subsequent clas- 
sical study. What a proof of the fact is this : that 
from all the hundreds of academies that have been 
at different times, the supplying fountains, from all 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 295 

quarters, for Yale college, only some seven thousand 
graduates have been gleaned by that venerable in- 
stitution, during one hundred and fifty-nine years 
past, as the contribution of educated men so called 
which it has been able to make to the community ! 
And how few of those who have passed through the 
college-course have either entered upon it, or come 
out from it, true, earnest, successful scholars ! 
Where are we to look for the right explanation of 
these facts ? In several directions indeed ; but 
nowhere so conclusively as to the courses of pre- 
paratory training, and the style of the men that 
have managed them, and of the influences that 
they have breathed or rather have not breathed 
upon them. In the plastic, formative period of 
preparation for the higher studies of early manhood, 
is the decisive spot where the horoscope of the stu- 
dent's future is cast. Here his aspirations acquire 
their full afflatus, and here his mental and moral 
habits their upward or downward bent. Although 
others may afterwards prune a tree to larger fruit- 
fulness, or trim it into a shape of greater beauty, 
yet he who first sets it, and determines the soil and 
position in which it is to grow, and all the first be- 
ginnings of its vital energy, stamps most of all his 
own directive will upon its form and stature, and 
upon the future fulness of its flowers and fruits. 
In the department of educational labor, occupied 



296 THE HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

by select schools, academies and higli schools, is the 
only ground that is left open, or that should be, to 
the force and skill of private enterprise, which is 
so effective in turning all the other wheels of social 
progress, and which should also have scope in the 
field of education for its wonder-working power 
when fully employed, as here it does possess in suf- 
ficiency. It is certainly one of the most cheering 
signs of the times, that so many more than for- 
merly have been impelled : some from one motive 
and some from another, but many indeed by high 
patriotic and Christian impulses as well as by per- 
sonal tastes and the inspirations of genius : to en- 
ter upon this grand work of earnest, personal ser- 
vice to their age, by their own individual labors in 
the cause of education, as God may prosper them. 
And the great pecuniary success of so many, who 
have had the right qualifications for obtaining it, 
is not an insignificant item in the amount of gen- 
eral good realized from their lives, in adorning with 
the outward symbols of prosperity a profession 
which has long been depreciated in the public treat- 
ment of it, far below its proper level which is equal 
with the highest. 

And the common schools, are they not indeed 
common enough? What immense ccngregations 
of pupils are often gathered together in them, un- 
der one roof, numbering in our large cities not 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 297 

merely several hundreds, as is usual, but a thousand 
and more, at times ; a fact which several fearfully 
destructive school-panics from the alarm of fire 
would have sufficed, one would think, to have for 
ever abolished. But is there any end to the evils, 
that a spirit of parsimony will either contrive or 
endure ? And what should be said farther of the 
poor economy of placing one male teacher only in 
such a monstrous educational establishment as its 
commanding officer, with a number of subordinate 
young females around him, as his coadjutors ; who 
are themselves poorly compensated, although ex- 
pected to do much work ; and many of whom have 
become teachers, instead of seamstresses, only be- 
cause the compensation was greater, and not from 
any warm sense of the glory and beauty of an ear- 
nest educator's life, or with any accompanying con- 
sciousness of disciplined preparation for undertaking 
its duties ! The principal also himself even of such 
mammoth common schools is put upon a salary, on 
which with the utmost carefulness he can barely 
live ; and therefore men of collegiate education feel 
that they can do better, than to accept such labo- 
rious but unrewarded positions ; unrewarded either 
in honor or money, and so crowded with all sorts of 
necessary generalities of arrangement and of in- 
struction, as to give but very unsatisfactory oppor- 
tunities of real usefulness to their incumbents. 



298 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

How, under suc]i economical and superficial ar- 
rangements, does the weary pupil keep ever revolv- 
ing, monotonously, in tlie same unbroken round, of 
ever learning many things and never coming to the 
real knowledge of any one of them. And what an 
utter want of any system, art or science is there, 
in the daily work appointed, or the general ends 
sought for the pupil, who is never individualized, 
and cannot be, in the treatment that he receives ; 
and who therefore gets only that share of the gen- 
eral benefit of such a very general style of school- 
work, that may fall by the natural or accidental 
force of circumstances to him, without his looking 
after it or any one else looking after it for him. 
Mental discipline should be the aim of the common 
schools ; and all their machinery should be so 
thoroughly contrived and managed in its working, 
that such a result should actually be gained, not 
only generally but also to a large degree. It is no 
answer to just criticism upon the insufficient ar- 
rangements or management of these or any other 
schools, to say that a faithful student can make 
great gain to himself, by a careful use of their priv- 
ileges. Few faithful students are self-formed in 
their origin. Discipline in its very etymology means 
something learned from others, like the word disci- 
ple, who is such a learner. The object of schools, 
as of churches, is not to profit those merely who are 



AND THE PROGKESS OF THE PEOPLE. 299 

already right, at least by approximation, but also 
to awaken and educate the dull and lethargic, who 
would otherwise pass through life unknowing and 
unknown. 

Neither the State nor the Church nor any con- 
siderable portion of the community, at large, are at 
all alive to the claims of the great cause of educa- 
tion, whether in its sjDecial or its general forms. If 
the affairs of business or of government had as lit- 
tle w^atchful interest bestowed upon them, they 
would be in a state of general anarchy. There is 
indeed considerable noise made about our educa- 
tional machinery at times, and in some places there 
is not a little clatter in its actual operations. But 
the product, in all high degrees, is certainly very 
small. There are often indeed quite wonderful ex- 
hibitions made of talent in declamation and com- 
position, in many schools and colleges, male and 
female : proofs, as ambitious teachers and friends 
would fain have their spectators believe, of a large 
amount of youthful attainment, if not also of 
youthful genius. But what becomes afterwards of 
the crop of superior writers and speakers and schol- 
ars, whose promise seemed so great ? Was the 
parade, made with such satisfaction, all a mere pit- 
iable farce and but an elaborate and not even well- 
concealed system of self-glorification, for those who 
got it up ? Or what was it ? Who can tell ? 



300 THE HIGHEK CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

Tlie strife is everywhere, undisguisedly, for 
numbers in nearly all our institutions ; and to this 
idea every thing like an elevated standard of re- 
quirements is generally sacrificed, so that admission 
shall be easy ; and all vigorous closeness of drill, as 
of stern requisition, is afterwards relaxed, so that 
the student shall have no argument, from intellec- 
tual uncomfortableness in his position, for leaving 
it. And then, to make a good external impression 
all the while upon the public mind, so as to keep 
as many as possible pleased and interested, the plan 
is to prepare a grand annual demonstration, which 
shall have the merit of striking the senses as favor- 
ably as possible. But, alas for such contrivances ! 
" water will find its level ; " and " the stream will 
rise no higher than its fountain ; " and the outward 
results of our educational system do not and will 
not mount above the point, to which they are ele- 
vated by their own inward working merits. Let no 
one think that satire is our delight. We have no 
skill in it and no liking for it ; but the truth we 
do like, whether single-edged or double-edged ; and 
although it be "a divider asunder of the soul and 
the spirit, and of the joints and the marrow." We 
write what we write complainingly, only with sad- 
ness ; and have no such theory as that strong writ- 
ing consists in sharp and bitter words. A spirit 
of denunciation belongs neither to a truth-loving 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 301 

nor to a man-loving disposition : it is our abhor- 
rence ; and God grant that it may ever be ! But, 
while even " the truth is not to be alwaj^s spoken," 
unless it is directly demanded, or its voluntary sup- 
pression would be a practical lie, yet, when the 
good of society requires its utterance, let it come, 
however unasked or even unwelcome, and in what- 
ever form of gentleness or wrath that is most ap- 
propriate to the case. 

Society has.no interest in obtaining any thing 
but realities. These are its life blood and its pow- 
er : its elements of growth and its glory. Real 
education is, like real religion, in all its bearings, 
personal and social, of priceless value. Were the 
prizes of life distributed into many portions, and 
the suitors for them parcelled into as many divis- 
ions more, the one class containing all the men of 
true high education would be found to possess all 
the prizes, except a meagre remainder too small to 
be worthy of much interest in their distribution. 
Society has, accordingly, the most vital interest in 
multiplying the number of its successful reapers 
in the harvest of life. Its true policy is, to equal- 
ize, only as it elevates, its members. 

The reason of so much more wide-spread indus- 
try and success in modern times is to be found in 
the more general diffusion of tlie influences and 
benefits of the Higher Education. A large and 



302 THE HIGHEK CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

true education possessed by any one man, besides 
the blessings directly achieved by it in bis own 
sphere of activity, also, although indirectly, yet 
powerfully quickens multitudes of others to enter- 
prise and effort. 

Much has been said in all ages about the unne- 
cessariness of high learning and education to true 
personal and social development ; but the illustra- 
tions chosen for the exemplification of this idea 
have been always selected from those men of rare 
native genius, who, by the strong upward impulse 
of their natures, mount, with special helps or with- 
out them, to conspicuous heights of attainment. 
Genius will prove itself genius, even without exter- 
nal aids. It is sky-born, and will soar : it is its na- 
ture. And so dulness cannot be galvanized into 
splendid talent, by mere energetic determination to 
stimulate and improve it. But let genius and 
scholarly toil combine their energies and influences 
in one result : let genius, in other words, instead 
of losing a large amount of its native momentum 
in moving against a sea of difficulties, move with a 
strong tide of advantages in its favor ; and what 
an argument for giving it aU possible facilities does 
its high use of them when obtained present. But 
the cause of education, as it always has been, so 
always wiU be, abundantly underrated by mean 
thinkers, as so many have treated in all ages the 



AND THE PKOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 303 

cause of vital religion in like manner, by glorifying 
natural goodness, in instances of large original de- 
velopment, at the supposed expense of practical 
Christianity, as manifested in the moral fruitage to 
be found on the cold unfriendly soil of a disposi- 
tion, marked with naturally small endowments, or 
possessing only a mass of perverted hereditary in- 
stincts. 

There is still another subject, which, for its in- 
jurious influence upon the tone of our educational 
and Christian principles and feelings, demands dis- 
tinct discussion here : the conferment of honorary 
degrees by our colleges and universities. What- 
ever good intention there may have been in their 
first establishment, or whatever fancied value these 
literary baubles may once have had, they have come, 
by great over-bestowment of late, and by their be- 
ing so often given for feeble and false reasons, to be 
ridiculous and dishonorable incumbrances to our 
educational system. Such was the history of crowns 
in ancient Greece. In the earlier and better pe- 
riods of their history, the Greeks made but little 
use of them ; for worth made the man and want 
of it the fellow. But, from being mere honorary 
wreaths of olive-leaf, as they were at the first, they 
came to be afterwards, in more degenerate times, 
crowns of solid gold ; that the decrease of their 
outward value as marks of distinction, by the fre- 



304 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

quency of their bestowal, might "be compensated by 
a corresponding increase in the inward value of 
their substance. And among the Athenians, pre- 
viously to the time of Alexander, crowns of gold 
were profusely distributed for every trifling feat, 
military, naval and civil. So inevitably has the 
tendency of all titles and badges of honor, as of the 
drama hitherto in every country, and indeed of 
public amusements generally, as such, been down- 
ward, uniformly and rapidly downward. So nobles, 
who, by the original signification of their name, 
were, at the first, men worthy to be known, have 
in all nations, where the title has been a civil in- 
stead of a moral one, degenerated ere long into the 
mere representatives of an ancestry who acquired 
personal distinctions for themselves, which their 
ignoble posterity have not only been nnable to 
equal, but even to keep. Honor is not a matter 
that can be bought and sold in the market of the 
world, nor can it be done up and labelled and passed 
around wherever it is wanted. Honor, of a true 
quality and enduring, is always originated in the 
life and character of him who possesses it : it can- 
not be taken from him, except by his own weak- 
ness and wickedness ; nor can it be increased a 
particle, by the formal parade of any idlers or flat- 
terers in his behalf, who are quite as apt to think, 



AND THE PEOGEESS OF THE PEOPLE, 305 

in whatever noise that they make over him, of ren- 
dering themselves conspicuous, as of glorifying him. 

Would that, as the progress of the age has 
quite destroyed the power of factitious forms, in 
reference to clergymen as a class, and made the so- 
cial position of each one of them depend, like that 
of every other man, on his individual character and 
attainments, without benefit of clergy ; and as of- 
ficial uniforms are obnoxious to our American feel- 
ings ; so our colleges and universities would strike 
their blow, also, like the rest of the people, their 
last, full, effectual blow at this remnant of a dispo- 
sition among us, to ape the traditionary silliness of 
earlier ages and of other lands. No forward move- 
ment could be more Christian, or more American, 
in its spirit : none more beneficent in its results. 
Here for once a great and good reform might be 
achieved by a mere negative process. Let them 
rigidly and forever abstain from giving any and all 
honorary degrees in the future ; and how soon 
would all those which have been so lavishly given, 
,and accepted with such inward and even undis- 
guised satisfaction, in the past, wither up and lose 
all their fragrance and their life, like the branches 
of a tree whose main trunk had been riven with the 
stroke of a thunderbolt. 

Honorary degrees they are denominated, except 
when in course : as none but the lower ones so 



306 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

called are ; but they are honorary in their use only 
to those who do not merit them, and, in a country 
like ours, are so often bestowed on such recipients as 
to make the di^riding line between them, as matters 
of real honor or of mere compliment, not gloriously 
indeed, but quite ingloriously, uncertain. When mer- 
ited, the college confers honor on itself, in recognizing 
such merit, rather than on the individual so no- 
ticed ; and when not merited the gift may be called 
honorary, but it actually honors neither the receiver 
nor the giver. A system of titular distinctions is 
sufficiently pleasing to weak and ambitious minds, 
to be sure of finding many secret if not open ad- 
mirers and advocates. But it should ever be the 
sentiment flying on the flagstaff of all our institu- 
tions, as a Christian people ; and the higher the" 
institution, the larger and brighter should be the 
letters in which it is written : that " mind is the 
standard of the man," and that real, honest, earnest, 
manliness and godliness are the only signals of honor 
that any man needs, or which any one, however 
tricked by himself or by others, really possesses.* 
Our plain American dress, in the presence of for- 
eign ambassadors at home, or of foreign courts 
abroad, bespangled and bejewelled as they are, we 
are quite willing to claim as indicative of our na- 
tional taste ; and let it be the symbol of that true 
simplicity of character, in all the relations of life, 



AND THE PKOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 307 

of a people whose habits and customs and institu- 
tions are, according to the just conceptions of our 
wisest and noblest thinkers, all formed anew, under 
the light and heat of gospel truth, out of all the 
elements of human experience and of human at- 
tainment, hitherto, as their staple. Would it not 
be worthy of us as a people, to ascend at once, in 
our secret and formal estimates of men and things, 
to the level to which Christianity points us, where 
human feelings and gauges run parallel, in their 
course, with the divine. It is the glory of our 
laws, and so far only have they any glory, that they 
are based upon the Law of God. We are a Chris- 
tian peo2;)le, and are in no danger of having our 
consciousness of so high a fact too intensified. 
Public sentiment needs earnest pressure in this di- 
rection. All the slow progress of humanity, in all 
ages and countries hitherto, alike in the imwritten 
laws of equity, honor, kindness and charity, pre- 
vailing in society, and in the formal statutes or- 
dained in reference to the many complications of 
human rights and human actions, has been but a 
laborious tardy passage ; and so tardy because made 
with so little direct request for guidance from above ; 
from one step to another, towards a full realized 
unity in the end with the law and the will of Grod. 
On this sublime elevation of entire intellectual and 
moral sympathy with Him will every community at 



308 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

last rest, as on a pinnacle of light, in bright, per- 
manent, hap23y repose. To that glorious mount of 
exaltation, therefore, let us as a people rejoice to 
lead the other nations of the earth, in all matters 
of business, enterprise, progress, legislation, juris- 
prudence, religion, literature and education. 

Could a book entitled The Secret History of 
Honorary Degrees, be prepared, according to the 
actual facts of the case, it would be full of comi- 
cal, not to say mortifying, revelations. Many, sup- 
posed to be quite independent in their sense of 
their position, would be found to be full of prurient 
desire for the help of such a college-bolster. What 
appears to the uninformed to be the product of 
spontaneous appreciation, would be seen to be too 
often the result of distant contrivance. Many are 
the hands that pull the wires ; and sinuous enough 
are the paths through which the influence comes at 
times : in order to secure for a friend that, which, 
though made of such account, is after all as near 
the shadow of nothing as any thing can be. Boards 
of College-trustees have a corporate existence, and 
must show the public that they are alive : they 
must do something that others will see ; and what 
can it be but spend money and give degrees. It 
makes no matter, of course, that they have been 
brought into their j)lace in the Board, on the ground 
of their wealth and its prospective promise of fu- 



AND THE PROGEESS OF THE PEOPLE. 309 

ture profit perchance to the institution, or of their 
general good position in society, although they 
have never been educated themselves ; and so are 
utterly destitute of all scholastic ideas and all the 
elements of just criticism and discrimination con- 
cerning the merits of their superiors. They are 
yet good tools for a few designing minds, that know- 
well how to use them. And besides, as our colleges 
are each of them, openly or by implication, a de- 
nominational pet, or, if not, somehow or other, do 
not commonly succeed, every denomination is anx- 
ious to hold its banner as high as any other, and to 
rank as many conspicuous men among its represen- 
tatives, as possible. And what way is there of 
manufacturing great men to order, like doctoring 
them with a title ? And then too how much good 
can a kind clergyman himself do sometimes, as he 
is very conscientious in believing : remembering 
well at the same time how much benefit a kindred 
service once realized to him : in obtaim'ng for'^#fel- 
low-clergyman, who has begun from his idleness or 
dulness to hold his position by a loose tenure, a 
doctvorate which shall make his people think that 
they were mistaken in their estimate of him, and 
that the real dulness was in themselves after all, 
instead of being in their minister. And if there 
be no other reason for giving doctorates, where they 
would not otherwise be bestowed, what an all-con- 



310 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

straining argument for action may it sometimes be, 
to an institution that wishes to droj) anchors to 
windward for funds or students, over a given area 
which it would fain secure as its own, to hind to it- 
self by such empty but influential flatteries ; and 
which from whatever motive given will always be 
rightly interpreted by the vanity of their recipients : 
the occupants of the leading pulpits at the more 
important points of action. Such are some of the 
sources, among others of no higher character, from 
which these so-called honors are annually scattered, 
ad nauseam, over the land. And, so far has the in- 
fluence of this weak unintellectual and undignified, 
not to say immoral, action of many of our colleges 
pervaded the community, that barbers and fiddlers, 
hair-dyers and pill-makers everywhere announce 
themselves, and with as much comfortable self-con- 
sciousness as any one else, as Professors of their 
several trades. They see many, called Doctors of 
Laws and of Divinity, that are utterly incapable of 
teaching either the law or the gospel, and imagine 
that, if an empty title helps others so much, one 
that they deserve in their calling, as they know, 
will certainly help them. And if colleges and cler- 
gymen value mere names so much, surely there 
must be something, they think, in a name. But it 
should be one of our fixed American fashions, not 
to generate, harbor or endure any shams. We are 



AND THE PBOGKESS OF THE PEOPLE. Sll 

believed, and not without reason, across the waters, 
to abound in them. Humbug, they say, is an 
American word ; and turning its edge upon us they 
use it to describe, in one brief term, all our chaiac- 
ter and all our institutions. Nowhere they say too 
are titles coveted so much, as among that famous 
democratic people ; nowhere do they cleave so te- 
naciously to those who have once received them ; 
and nowhere are they conferred, on such frivolous 
and unintelligible grounds. With such ancestral 
and liistorical antecedents as we have, we should, 
as a matter of self-respect as a people, abstain care- 
fully from all pretentious, as well as all unmeaning, 
ceremonies, forms and decorations. Our posterity 
will thank us for keeping the spirit of our fathers, 
and much more for practically exemplifying, in all 
our habits and customs, the spirit of the Bible. 
Rome, like Greece, so long as she was simple in her 
tastes and honored real merit and therefore abound- 
ed in true workers, was inwardly great ; and so 
shall we be, who are, for the all-conquering ten- 
dency, or rather destiny, of our ideas and institu- 
tions, the Rome of the modern world, if we main- 
tain those ingenuous, honest, earnest, habits as a 
people, which are the elements of all true success, 
both for individuals and for nations. And this aU 
the more : since the Lord Jehovah will be with us, 
whom Rome knew not ; and who Himself bids us 



312 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

seek for tliat honor, wliicli comes from God only. 
This, if obtained, will make one rich indeed ; while 
without it whatever ornaments any one may wear 
they are but the ornaments of a beggar : the honor 
which He bestows on him, who gives all diligence 
in getting and doing, at all times, every kind of 
good. 

The intellectual and moral littleness of hanker- 
ing after degrees has come to be one of the signs 
of the times among us ; as also, in the light of 
what has been said, of our degeneracy so far as a 
people. As college commencements annually re- 
cur, what numerous eyes are turned longingly 
towards them, for the bestowment of these tawdry 
honors. Letters, few of them self-moved from the 
source whence they appear to come, and hints and 
requests, buzz about the faculty and trustees of 
colleges, at such a time, as bees about sweet flow- 
ers in summer ; and a thinking observer comes to 
fear, that the Republic of letters is almost wholly 
demoralized, in reference to its points of honor : for 
such petty reasons do those, who keep the mystic 
keys to these desired treasures, arise, at such a 
time, in all haste for the deliverance of hopes long 
deferred. 

Were this ridiculous system of manufacturing 
honors to order now sought to be introduced for the 
first time, could it j)Ossible be started, so as to go ? 



AND THE PKOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 313 

Would it encounter less derision, than the new- 
fangled idea of conferring degrees on literary wo- 
men receives in its initiation ? And is it in itself 
any more beautiful or respectable, when perpetuated 
than when initiated ? Time may accustom men 
to abuses, and make them callous to their evils ; 
but it only aggravates instead of diminishing the 
abuses themselves. How strange too the inconsis- 
tencies of even intelligent and good men ! He 
who would smile at an European official, for exhib- 
iting habitually upon his person, with whatever 
seeming unconsciousness, the decorations of his of- 
fice ; or, at a savage, for walking about in all grav- 
ity with a very dignified sense of the fact, that he 
had a large brass ring hanging from his nose ; or, 
at a child, for peering constantly into a mirror to 
enjoy the sight of some ribbons that were flaunting 
about its head : will yet value for himself, quite as 
much, the tinkling of a few alphabetic symbols 
around about his name, when fastened upon it by 
way of honor : a fact which they who added them 
foresaw, and bestowed them therefore for the sake 
of pleasing him. If this does not exemplify the 
idea of being ^' pleased with a rattle and tickled 
with a straw," what illustration could be furnished 
of it ? How different from such an estimation of 
these literary trinkets, which, like the pewter 

watches of children, have nothing, but their looks 
14 



314 THE HIGHEK CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

to recommend them, was that of the great Hum- 
boldt, recently deceased, after whose death the many 
badges of honor which he had received, through a 
long life, were found, to the surprise of every one, 
lying around in neglected nooks and corners, among 
rags and old papers ; while the leaves of trees and 
specimens of minerals and pressed flowers were laid 
by in choice places, and kept with jealous care. 
Thanks to this great man for this undesigned, but 
true and manly, utterance concerning the utter in- 
significance of such " semilunar fardels." 

It is the church that sustains this system of 
glittering follies. Kich churches, in large places 
and small alike, desire to exhibit as many signals as 
possible of metropolitan grandeur ; and therefore 
relish architectural magnificence, and a large broth- 
erhood, for the good outward show that it makes, 
and a preacher that carries about with him as many 
public recognitions as may be of his superiority to 
others in his neighborhood. And so long as such 
churches have leaders that covet these ribbons, and 
it is manifest that both pastor and people can be 
gained at one comjDlimentary throw of good feeling 
toward them, in such a way, the temptation will 
be Well-nigh irresistible to young and weak colleges, 
seeking for growth in popularity, to cater freely to 
their expectations. In the accounts of ecclesiasti- 
cal meetings how careful are the clerks of record to 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 315 

file off the Doctors of Divinity by themselves as if 
of higher rank than the rest. So universal is this 
custom, and so long has it been maintained, that 
the weaker victims of the system have really come 
to feel, from the special parade that is made of 
their names by their brethren, that they are in fact 
entitled to it on their own account. In the maga- 
zines, also, published by our Religious Societies, 
Foreign Missionary, Home Missionary and all, the 
same special care to place all such titled officers 
and members in a separate seat of honor, where 
their empty distinctions shall be sure to be noticed, 
is clearly observable. And all this in the church 
of God ! whose corner-stone is Christ, the meek 
and lowly crucified one ; and the voice of whose 
word to each one of His followers is, " except ye 
have the spirit of Christ ye are none of His." 
That spirit is the spirit of the cross : the spirit of 
service unto others, through any degrees of joyful 
self-sacrifice that their greatest good may demand. 
The answer to that question of strife which arose 
in the church in his day : " which of them should 
be the greatest ; " and that so often arises in it 
now : is the same that it was then : " he who 
would be the greatest of all must be the ser- 
vant of all." Are not those therefore, who give in 
the household of Jesus Christ a special place of no- 
tice to brethren, whose distinctions are as cheaply 



316 THE HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

obtained, as were those gold rings, whicli some re- 
garded in James' day and said to their wearers, 
" sit ye here in a good place : " just as truly "judges 
of evil thoughts " as were they ? and all the more 
so, since, being warned by their wicked example, 
they have yet knowingly fallen into the same snare ? 
There are two specific commands of the great 
Head of the Church, besides many general ones, 
that, according to all natural principles of interpre- 
tation, are directly relevant to this subject. " Call 
no man your Father upon the earth ; " and ' ' Be 
not ye called Rabbi." Taken in connection with 
another passage : " My brethren, be not many" of 
you " masters " or teachers, '^ knowing that there- 
by " (that is, if unfaithful) " ye shall receive the 
greater condemnation : " their sense is plain. The 
Head of the Church is very jealous of having any 
of its members act as Heads in it unto any of His 
children whom He would have all look directly to 
Him and not to Apollos, Paul, Calvin or Edwards, 
who were " but ministers " or servants " by whom 
they believed." It is not pleasing to Christ that 
any .who preach in His name should use any power 
or hold any position of factitious origin or influence 
over others. Power belongeth unto Him ; and the 
weapons of their warfare are not carnal but spirit- 
ual : simply truth and love used faithfully and with 



AND THE PKOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 317 

full trust in Him. Any influence acquired in the 
church in any other way is false and pernicious. 

How then can this great organized system, of 
annually manufactured follies, he overthrown, as it 
ought to he, for the good of man and the glory of 
God ? There are not wanting favorahle signs oi 
progress in this direction. A few men, hy looking 
steadfastly up into the sky in silence, can lead a 
large crowd to gather around them and look with 
them. A few men, hy getting up an alarm in a 
puhlic assembly, can soon make all the rest as 
alarmed as themselves. The sympathies of men 
are as quick as they are universal. And so, every 
man who keejis quiet and cheerful in a general 
alarm, leads others to imitate him, as every man 
that passes by a gaping crowd, intent upon his bu- 
siness, helps to disperse them. Many are now al- 
ready full of the feeling concerning honorary de- 
grees that is expressed in these pages, and regard 
their continuance not only as farcical, but as greatly 
injurious to the progress of true scholarship and of 
true religion. Instead also of the long array of ti- 
tles with which authors, a little while ago, were 
careful to drape their names on title-pages, as if 
wishing to walk in robes of state before their read- 
ers at their very introduction to them, the growing 
fashion is coming to be, as we are glad to discover, 
to use the bare name by itself, which is certainly 



318 THE HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

more beautiful alone tlian with any appendages. 
Let Authors one and all follow this new and Amer- 
ican fashion : it deserves a full establishment. Let 
secretaries also drop the custom of putting two D's 
after any one's name, which are no better than two 
Q's or Z's ; and which if any man values, let him 
put them on his own name for himself. Whoever 
thinks, except in College Catalogues, of keeping 
track of the LL. D's that different lawyers have 
received, in writing or speaking their names. If 
colleges will persist in giving these titles, let them 
be dropped from public observation in the case of 
clergymen, just as in Germany scholars take no 
note of them in publishing each other's names. 
And let the editors of papers and periodicals contrib- 
ute their influence to make degrees preserve their 
own vitality, without any help whatever from them. 
In correspondence also much may be done, to let 
them drop to the ground and be forgotten as they 
certainly wiU be, without artificial help to sustain 
them. 

Since the church makes such account of eccle- 
siastical titles, a similar fashion for folly has come 
into vogue, of late, in reference to civil offices : of 
calling those who have once been their incumbents, 
ever afterwards, Honorable. And many are the 
men over all the land, who, having, by political ac- 
cident and even it may be in ways less honorable, 



AND THE PKOGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 319 

obtained public promotion, are now moving about 
in the community, with a very satisfying persuasion 
of their honorableness, since everybody writes and 
calls them such, that are yet among the smallest 
or most unworthy specimens of the race. 

If any one thinks that too much prominence, 
relatively, is given to this topic of our general sub- 
ject, in this place, his convictions will change to 
ours, we believe, on farther thought. Its connec- 
tions with the Higher Christian Education of our 
country are vital. So long as social distinctions 
can be gotten by machinery, or under sinister influ- 
ences of any kind, the public tone of feeling con- 
cerning the necessary relation appointed of God be- 
tween labor and its rewards, and between personal 
merit and public consideration and usefulness is so 
far assailed and lowered ; and the traditions of 
men are practically substituted for the command- 
ments of God. All the elevation of estimate and 
aim which the community at large are to acquire 
anew from one age to another, they are to gain from 
the views and feelings of our educated and Chris- 
tian thinkers ; and it is surely high time that they 
should set the example in every thing, of acting 
according to things as they are. The tide of pub- 
lic sentiment on all great things, even in Christian 
lands, always runs much below high-water-mark ; 
and the currents of manly enterprise and energy 



320 THE HIGHEK CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

are always slower and weaker in most men's hearts, 
than they ought to be. What an evil therefore 
and what a sin is it, for the leaders of society to 
knowingly impair, and pervert the elements of 
right and strong thought and of true principles in 
the community ! We have ventured indeed over 
more space in this part of our subject than we 
should have done, did we know of any other simi- 
lar discussion of this subject elsewhere. 

II. The connection of the Higher Education, 
specifically, with all the lower forms of general ed- 
ucation. 

Where in all nature is what is high developed, 
only or chiefly by what is underneath it .^ AH 
growths are indeed by necessity from beneath up- 
wards. But where resides, where acts, the stimu- 
lating power ? The busy springs and wheels of 
vegetable life are set in motion daily by the sun, 
with ever increasing force, as he mounts continually 
on his ascending pathway to high noon. Under the 
magic touch of his beams, the vapors rise, that, as 
they go up, bathe the leaves with those invisible 
drops of mist that sufi&ce to meet their minute in- 
visible wants, only to descend in copious fulness 
for a greater blessing on them, in the hour of their 
greater need. From the same upper sphere comes 
down the heat which, rising towards its source 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOrLE, 321 

again, gives in its reflex benefit that warmth, by 
which with moisture all things grow. In the la- 
boratory of leaves which to most eyes merely crown 
the otherwise unsightly shapes of trees, with beauty 
of form for the eye, or with fulness of shelter from 
the burning sun, goes on the work of deoxidation 
and assimilation, by which they keep ever rising 
and spreading, with their burden of flowers, or 
fruit, or shade, towards the skies. So in the head, 
regnant over all the members of the body, from the 
height of whose visual orbs flashes forth the light 
of thought and of purposed will, in that high se- 
cret place of power resides the full electric energy 
of the man. Down from above, through all the 
currents of life, pass the quickening impulses of 
the ever-wakeful mind. So, in the vital economy 
of God's plans and powers. He " sits above in the 
circle of the Heavens," not simply '^ to behold the 
children of men," and '"' see if there are any that 
seek after God," but also, much more, to commu- 
nicate, with love and skill and all-pervasive watch- 
fulness, the vital contact of His providence and 
grace to every creature, as he needs. 

Let not this true philosophy of all acquired ele- 
vations and growths be unnoticed or forgotten. The 
quickening, attractive, elevating, force must always 
be found or placed above. And so, the higher 

classes raise the lower to new points of progress and 
14* 



322 THE HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

enjoyment, by the force of their own example and 
the real superiority of their own attainments ; rather 
than by any formal theories or mechanical contri- 
vances that they may apply to them. Men imi- 
tate, without consciousness of the fact, or at least 
reflection upon it, as if by a law of instinct, their 
superiors. Classes, communities and nations do it ; 
and so do educational and religious institutions. 

Elevation, real or supposed, makes one at once, it 
is true, a mark for envious eyes to many in the same 
neighborhood, or elsewhere in the same employment, 
who stand upon a lower level of observation or of 
privileges. The world would not be depraved, if 
such facts did not appear in it. Human nature 
nowhere likes to be, or to be put, in the background. 
Its opposition to such a dilemma is heredjitary and 
perpetual ; and, in the manifestation of this fact, 
extremes here as in other things often meet, in ways 
strangely humorous, connected with those at the 
same time which are as strangely solemn, wicked or 
objectionable. But other tendencies and more influ- 
ential appear also, in minds of any natural nobility of 
constitution : a disposition to follow in the footsteps 
of those who are mounting upwards and onwards to 
new heights of achievement. And however our com- 
mon nature may be overlaid with accumulations of 
folly and of guilt, the instinct to imitate and equal 
those possessing more privileges and a better posi- 



AND THE PROGEESS OF THE PEOPLE. 323 

tion tliau ourselves, is ever-present and ever-active, 
as one of the strongest impulses of our being, in 
each one of us. A good example is one of the 
greatest earthly electrifiers known to the human 
heart ; and the great and good reign, by their very 
character, with kingly power over those who gaze 
at them and are spell-bound, as they gaze. 

Where universities and colleges are poor, there 
poor academies will appear ; and where these 
abound, common schools will be also poor. They 
will all dwell together in a common poverty, or rise 
together into a common excellence. The true mode 
of elevating them is not, to stand beneath, and, by 
the lever of authorship or of public lecturing or of 
formal state-action, undertake to raise up, by de- 
grees, the lower stratum of these educational appli- 
ances, with all the superincumbent mass above it ; 
but, commencing with the highest Form of educa- 
tion, to raise it higher still, making its advantages 
as widely accessible in a right way as possible. 
The Form ranged next below will then itself have 
opportunity to expand and, by the powerful attrac- 
tion of influences from above, and the pleasurable 
motive for undertaking to rise, since there is room 
for it, by its own efforts into a new atmosphere of 
faculties and privileges, will move upwards, as if by 
the force of inward instincts, and these so full per- 
chance of conscious energy, as to make it seem dif- 



324 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

ficult to keep from rising. So, in society, when its 
leaders fall, tlie stimulus to arise and occupy the 
places above them operates at once on minds that 
before were subordinate, alike in their position and 
in their feelings ; so that they mount from their 
new impulses into their new spheres and move in 
them, as easily as if they had always occupied them 
before. 

One of the great practical rules of social phi- 
losophy is, that " to him who hath shall more be 
given." And as men delight most, in giving bene- 
factions and endowments to institutions that have 
already strong foundations, and are sure to live, in- 
stead of to those whose feebleness, while it makes 
the strongest appeals to their beneficence, casts at 
the same time a cloud of doubt over their future ; 
so, the community at large are best pleased, when 
those institutions are still more enlarged and ag- 
grandized, in whatever way, that possess already 
the greatest functions for occupying well the great- 
est sphere of activity. If in the past they have 
squandered their resources and abused the privi- 
leges of their position, the desire to see them glori- 
fied with greater resources will be indeed exceed- 
ingly, and perhaps fatally, diminished ; but still 
the fact remains, that, so long as power of any kind 
is rightly used, or supposed to be, the minds of men 
are pleased with its accumulation. 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 325 

There are doubtless many ignorant persons in 
every enlightened community, who think that the 
rich are the natural enemies of the poor : forgetting 
that, but for the enterprises, expenditures and cap- 
ital, employed or loaned, of the rich, the poor would 
be poor without mitigation and beyond redemption, 
having no change or hope of change at any time in 
their circumstances. Such minds will of course 
look askance at the idea of locking up either money 
or men in institutions entirely separate, as they seem 
to them to be, from the business and bosom of so- 
ciety around them. But schools and colleges are 
the forts and castles of the land ; and the higher 
their grade and the style of their working influences, 
as of their workmanship, the greater is their ser- 
vice to the Church and to the State, Let therefore 
the highest of them be made higher still, and let 
the State itself show increased zeal for their pros- 
perity, like that which it is so fond of showing at 
least in name for common schools. 

III. The necessity and beauty of the Higher 
Education being, in all its influence upon the mass- 
es, thoroughly and inspiringly Christian. 

Society has a fundamental interest in the great- 
est possible spread of Christianity, and especially 
in its highest forms. Objective Christianity is one 
thing, and Subjective Christianity quite another. 



326 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

The one, like geometry or any other absolute sci- 
ence, is abstract and ideal and as such perfect and 
unchangeable. The other is ever-varying in every 
age and in every individual that possesses it, and is 
Christianity, not as it is in itself, but as it appears 
when realized and vitalized in those human hearts 
into vs^hich it has been introduced, as the great per- 
manent principle of life. Eeal subjective Chris- 
tianity is therefore in an ignorant mind of far lower 
qualities, for joy to its possessor and for beauty to a 
beholder, than in a mind full of intelligent views, 
and of perpetually high strong thought ; and such 
a mind has also a far different amount of momen- 
tum in it, in respect to all the elements of personal 
activity and of social influence. In no field there- 
fore does intellectual cultivation, on the one hand, 
manifest its value more than in that of personal 
religion ; and so also, on the other, nowhere does 
practical Christianity show such a height and 
breadth of development, in power of thought and 
conception and in beauty of faith and grace, as in 
minds of great native and acquired enlargement, 
that have been thoroughly sanctified from above. 

Society has therefore the greatest possible in- 
terest in the universal prevalence of Christian- 
ity. On two points, particularly, is this inter- 
est most concentrated : the true, living, earnest, 
Christianity of those who are its actual leaders, and 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE, 327 

that likewise of its educators, who are ever busy in 
preparing the succession of its leaders, from one 
generation to another. 

§ 1. The leaders of society in whatever age are its 
thinkers, especially those whose thoughts are trans- 
fused with energy into all their actions. The higher 
the style of development in the community at 
large, the higher will be the quality of thought re- 
quired in its leaders ; and the more depth and uni- 
formity of poAver in its demonstration. Society has 
therefore as great an interest in the right accoutre- 
ment of its thinkers for their work and their right 
action in it, as in the nature and degree of the great 
results which are to flow from their aims and ef- 
forts. As mankind will have and must have lead- 
ers, the only question is, what kind they will de- 
mand and what kind they will accept. Those only 
should society welcome to the van of its movements, 
who, by their attainments, energy and aims, intel- 
lectually and morally, are qualified and disposed to 
do the true work of leaders. All who are not lead- 
ers for God and to God are sure of discomfiture, 
sooner or later, in their plans, because He is against 
them, and they only lead their followers away at 
every step from true honor and prosperity. The 
wanderings of the Israelites in the wilderness on 
their way to Canaan, for forty years, forwards and 
backwards, up and down, now near and now away 



328 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

from tlie true path out of Egypt to tlie Promised 
Land : a journey, which to modern travel consists 
of hut a few hrief days : is hut a type of the er- 
rant "directions in which God will lead ahout all 
those in their plans, who undertake to dispense with 
His guidance and blessing. Is not the history of 
the nations hitherto sufficiently sad ? Is not their 
wail over their own perished hopes of greatness in 
all the past, which has been in every nation hut a 
mass of broken hopes and broken hearts, long 
enough and deep enough to fill the most vacant ear 
with its weight of wo ? A true picture of the An- 
gel of Humanity standing, and looking in mute 
survey over the desolations of ages, would be in 
every land but a mourning Kachel, weeping over 
her children and refusing to be comforted because 
they are not. And, as in ancient fable Niobe was 
represented as metamorphosed into a stone and yet 
even then shedding tears over her offspring which 
had been slain, so, to a true interpreter of the si- 
lent hills, as they stand in quiet majesty around 
the vales and cities of the old world, they seem to 
be ever looking down in still, stony grief, upon the 
wrecks of human fate and fortune that they have 
witnessed. That cheerful outlook upon life, which 
Eeligion bids us always take, is not to be obtained 
from the stand-point of human experience, human 
history or human character. All is mist and dark- 



ANB THE PKOGEESS OF THE PEOPLE. 329 

ness here. Hard indeed must his heart be, who can 
look over the great sepulchral fields of national 
ruin, for six thousand years, and feel no deep pity 
for mankind, no wonder at their follies and no ad- 
miration at God's amazing patience towards the 
race ! Harder than the heart of Xerxes, who, in 
all his gorgeous vanity, yet wept to think that of 
that vast multitude which stood before him, not 
one would be alive at the end of a hundred years, to 
remember him or them ! Caius Marius, that man 
who, though of stern and iron heart, sat, himself a 
fugitive, with tearful eyes, amid the ruins of Car- 
thage, meditating on all its wide waste of splendor, 
is no inapt image of the picture, which the Muse 
of History presents to every thoughtful mind, as she 
lays by her pen and sits down to recall to her own 
thoughts the lessons of sword and fire and sorrow, 
which she has recounted unto others. 

And when will the dawn of " The good time 
coming," of which every one loves to hear and 
dream and sing, appear over all the earth ? When 
will the voice of Universal Humanity change from 
a low wail, as now in every land, to outbursts of 
gladness everywhere ? Not, until the leaders of 
society, in politics, business, fashion, enterprise, lit- 
erature, thought and religion are men of high 
thought, pure purposes and holy aims. Every com- 
munity is what its leaders are, as truly as is every 



330 THE HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

army. And tlie history of the progressive advance- 
ments of society : and these are the elements of 
history that give it its value : is but a portrayal of 
the lives of its leaders, as seen in their outward ef- 
fects, instead of in their inward workings. What 
a few leaders of the right sort can do, when they 
are in earnest, let the history of the Eeformation, 
or of Plymouth Colony, or of Modern Missionary 
Propagandism, in their now grand and ever enlarg- 
ing issues, testify. 

§ 2. Society has also the greatest possible inter- 
est in the actual religious character and activity of 
its educators. 

There are no such benefactors to any people, as 
its true educators. Their bestowments are not 
consumed as they are made, but are laid by in per- 
manent investment for ever new use while the world 
stands. They do a double work of love : that, of 
holding up the light of their individual character 
and attainments unto others of their own day and 
that, of training the future men who are to distrib- 
ute through the next generation the ideas and in- 
fluences with which they inspire them. Those im- 
possible wishes that so many utter, with so much 
feeling : that they would fain live their lives over 
again, since now they could improve them so 
much, and would be careful to shake oif, if they 
could, those personal disabilities which now confine 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 331 

the energies that they feel ever swelling, though re- 
strained, within them : these are all open every clay 
to the realization of the teacher. He does daily 
live over his life again in his pupils, and can ac- 
complish in them and for them what he would like 
to have the opportunity of doing anew for himself. 
In their persons, electrified by his thoughts and 
feelings, his plans and efforts, he becomes, and with 
almost if not quite a sort of double consciousness 
of his multiplied existence, hundred-handed for ac- 
tion in the world. 

To the community, therefore, the question, who 
are to manufacture the character of the people, es- 
pecially in reference to their next stage of develop- 
ment, and how they are to do it, is one altogether 
above that of tariffs and all matters of mere mone- 
tary loss and gain. To do their work rightly they 
must be of course in advance, in their ideas, of the 
generation with which they are living : men of large 
attainments, of high-breathing energy, of active 
public spirit and of all heroic manliness of charac- 
ter. The style of their work also should be in its 
own nature that which will endure the wear of 
time, and stand firm amid all the changes of hu- 
man feeling and of human experience. But the 
first necessity that they or their work may be right 
is, that they shall both be intelligently and earnestly 
Christian. 



332 THE HIGHER CHRIBTIAN EDUCATION 

The connection between general intelligence 
and general Christianity is such, that many social 
philosophers have mistaken the relation between 
them, and pertinaciously, if not honestly, main- 
tained that the true mode of Christianizing any 
heathen people is first, to enlighten and elevate 
them by other appliances, and then to introduce 
the gospel as a divine after-growth among them. 
But there is no fountain of quickening, intellectual 
influences, like the Bible. Nothing will so stir the 
reason to its profoundest depths of thought, as its 
amazing truths : nothing so kindle the imagination 
as the magnificence of its revelations. It makes 
time grand, by connecting it in all its minutest af- 
fairs with eternity : and it sets over against our 
own finite consciousness and finite weakness an In- 
finite Object of thought and feeling, of love and of 
action. Christianity is the only real and the only 
possible elevator of man. How does the miserably 
imperfect and impure civilization of ancient Greece 
and Eome, amid all their beautiful works of mate- 
rial or literary art, in its echo to this truth, as 
declared in the better state of modern times, as 
Christianized, give this truth a double significance. 
Intellectual cultivation can indeed exist, and in a 
high degree, by itself and neither imply nor induce 
in any degree true religion ; but not so with Chris- 
tianity, which is something more than a mere form 



AND THE PKOGKESS OF THE PEOPLE, 333 

of social ornamentation, and which, being in its 
own nature a quickener to all the higher demonstra- 
tions of the highest elements of our nature individ- 
ually and collectively, cannot exist alone. Its 
march among the nations is everywhere with a bright 
train of attending benefits. Man is fundamentally 
a religious being and must be so treated, in order 
to receive any true development in any part of his 
nature,- and much more in the whole harmonious 
round of all its united complicatio*ns. 

In the Higher Christian Education, as generally 
diffused as possible, lie all the means of improving 
or even of joreserving society. It has been often 
asked in a reverie, whether the hosts of Barbarism, 
which are stiU as ever in the majority for numbers, 
may not after all come down yet upon the civilized 
world, and sweep away, as with a deluge of wrath, 
all its facts and fixtures. We answer spontaneously 
and emphatically. No ! And why "? Because of the 
sure promise of Grod that society shall keep ever 
advancing towards a perfect state, so that " right- 
eousness shall one day cover the earth as the waters 
cover the depths of the sea ; " and because also of 
the inherent, unconquerable, vitality of Christianity 
itself, as the greatest of all the forces that ever 
have acted upon the world, or can act upon it. The 
barriers of high gospel-truth are indeed invisible, 
but all the more impregnable. Truth can no more 



334 THE HIGHEE CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

be fought with guns and swords than can light and 
air. And around the ramparts of Christianity stand 
flaming angels, out of sight, who love the truth as 
we love our lives, and who stand there strong and 
flaming not in vain. 

The highest possible degree therefore of true 
Christian education, both among the leaders and 
the masses of society, is the greatest real necessity 
both of the Church and of the world. 

IV. Some of the chief results already accom- 
plished by high Christian Scholarship in the world. 

The apparent sources of power are seldom the 
real ones. There is usually a power behind the 
throne, as well as on it ; and the greater, in mod- 
ern times, is this one of the two. In the civil or- 
ganization of society, woman is not recognized at all 
as a citizen ; and in many communities has not the 
common privilege even of receiving and transferring 
property in her own name ; and yet who does not 
know that her influence is felt, with not only sub- 
duing but also inspiring and controlling power, in 
every part of the social fabric. So scholars, in 
their quiet retreats and by the silent movements of 
their thoughts, set in motion the great noisy ma- 
chinerv of the times. The thoughts are venerated 
in their minds to-day, that are to give shock and 
sway to the forces of the age to-morrow. The dif- 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 335 

ference between civilized and savage life is this : 
that in the civilized we have a vast accunmlation 
of living influences and living results, that have 
been poured forth from the fountains of thought in 
multitudes of men in all the past ; while in savage 
life, not more overgrown with forests, to which the 
word savage *•'•" itself has reference, is the face of na- 
ture, than wild and uncultivated also is every heart 
and every mind. Modern civilization is therefore 
the splendid accumulation of all the great and good 
thoughts of the past, preserved in material fabrics 
and improvements, in books, in institutions, laws 
and customs and in the habits of the Living Age ; 
and the new improvements of the times have come 
from new tides of thought, pouring out new bless- 
ings upon the community. 

The progress of the Age is therefore the pro- 
gress of Thought realized, and fixed in abiding 
forms. Scholars are the miners, in hidden places, 
of the solid ores, which the busy throng around con- 
vert into the current coin of life. Some, as they 
see them walk in meditative moods about the world, 
imagine that they are misanthropes, or at least quite 
ascetic in their tastes, and full of all impracticable 
abstractions : mere shadows of what they might 
have been, endurable as necessary evils in the social 

* French suuvage, Lat. silvaticus, belonging to a wood. 



336 THE HIGHER CHEISTIAN EDUCATION 

state, but without form or comeliness themselves 
as specimens of humanity. But hold, ye triflers, 
who think so lightly of them ! These tranquil, 
modest men are revolving studiously in their hearts, 
all the while, some larger plans of good for you. 
Whatever new discoveries are to be made for the 
advancement of your personal comfort, or of your 
personal sphere of activity and prosperity, they must 
be originated in their thoughts. 

The material workers of the world know not 
how materialistic are their conceptions. Happy 
are they, if they do not entirely exclude Grod Him- 
self from the orb of their vision ; even from both 
the centre and the circumference of His own works, 
in their comprehension of them. This at least is 
an instructive fact, that the sceptical thinkers 
among the masses are the most abundant among 
mechanics, who are perpetually at work amid the 
fixed laws and elements of matter and upon them. 
False political economists, applying the gauge of 
material productiveness to the men of thought, 
claim that, as they do not produce the means of 
bodily subsistence, they are no true producers at 
all : forgetting that, as they give higher facilities 
and finish and wider applications and uses to even 
the physical and mechanical products of the age, 
thQy add, in the direction of greater fertility of soil 
and greater skill in working it, greater ease and ex- 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE. 337 

tent of manufacture, and greater range of use for 
both space and time, the highest of all material ele- 
ments of advantage to material products ; wliile, 
in elevating the inward character and power of 
those who use them, they make those, for whom all 
forms of matter as originated from God or modified 
by man were made, and but for whom they are ut- 
terly functionless of themselves, of a far nobler and 
better style of being. Others therefore enjoy under 
their influence the good to be obtained from things 
physical in higher degrees than otherwise ; and their 
varied elements are thereby made to contribute to 
the sustenance, activity and enjoyment, jjractically, 
of a higher order of Humanity. Metals and prod- 
ucts and fabrics of any large or high sort are not 
wanted, where the products of the mind are want- 
ing. 

Scholarship is usually thought to be inherently 
addicted to conservative ideas. It is indeed ; but 
it is also full, in all its high and true forms, of an 
earnest spirit of progress. Both elements are es- 
sential to a true well-harmonized character in an 
individual, or in the community at large. Every 
thing good is to be carefully conserved at the same 
time that every evil thing is to be diligently re- 
moved. The two ordinances, to " hold fast that 
which is good," and to " turn men from the power 
of Satan unto God," agree together and must be 
15 



338 THE HIGHEK CHKISTIAN EDUCATION 

combined in any individual or State, that would 
have a divine temper or do an abiding work for 
God. In an age and a country so full of the chances 
of material prosj)erity as ours, it is indeed true that 
the majority of those who have chosen a life of 
study have been men of quiet and even of phleg- 
matic temperaments : especially those who have 
devoted themselves to education, where, of aU fields 
of labor, both for the style of work to be done and 
the style of results to be gained in it, it is abso- 
lutely requisite, that those who undertake it should 
be men of the most energetic manly qualities of 
person, intellect and action. The preponderance 
accordingly of conservative tendencies in the edu- 
cated men of our land is to be greatly charged, to 
the special constitutional type of the class of minds 
that have thus far been influenced to choose the 
life of the scholar. He who enters in this country 
upon the profession of the ministry or of education, 
or becomes one of that small number entitled the 
literary class, must ordinarily relinquish, at the out- 
set, all those prospects of gain which are so abun- 
dant in every other calling, in a land so full of all 
great resources of material wealth, and so suddenly 
opened, with its many secret springs of prosperity, to 
the range of modern enterprise, and to all the ap- 
pliances of modern invention, activity and progress. 
The two great speculative tendencies of men in 



AND THE PROGKESS OF THE PEOPLE. 339 

wrong directions are those to Scepticism and Super- 
stition, or to doubt and credulity, which are the 
two opposite poles of a wrong heart. These, with 
the accompanying ignorance from which they spring, 
are the sources of all human error. There is noth- 
ing of power enough to destroy them, and nothing 
really antagonistic to them, hut Christian Truth 
and Christian Scholarship. Education and religion 
each tend to destroy both scepticism and supersti- 
tion, and consequently with double force, when 
combined. They meet at many, yea rather, when 
in their full development and activity, at all points, 
in harmonious action. If true religion tends to 
make a man modest and humble, so does true edu- 
cation. Each liberalizes the mind, and each tends 
to make the balance firm and true of all its thoughts 
and impulses. Each habituates it to circumspection, 
prudence, care, and watchful continuity of right pur- 
pose and of right action. Each is full of all strong 
restraints from folly and from crime : and crime is but 
folly in its stronger forms ; and each abounds also in 
all quickening influences and results. From the 
records of crime the names of highly educated men 
are delightfully absent ; and in communities, where 
there is the most education among the masses, there 
is to be found with those born on the soil the most 
general freedom from all the grosser forms of de- 
pravity. 



340 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Sucli an upward bearing has our Maker given 
to our natures, that, in all nations men look in- 
stinctively to those above them for guidance. In 
Heathen lands they turn, if bold, to their chief- 
tains, to lead them on to deeds of blood ; or, if 
submissive and desponding, under the power of des- 
potic masters, they bend before them in craven obei- 
sance to thank them for the privilege of breathing 
in their presence. In more enlightened lands the 
same spell of influence, although more invisible in 
its action, is thrown by those who are superior in 
power, over those beneath them. Men, accordingly, 
move even in the Church, composed nominally of 
the Lord^s freemen, in denominational lines and in 
philosophical schools and under prescribed doctrinal 
banners and with the certain sound of creed-trump- 
ets. Fashion rules in matters of opinion as impe- 
riously over the mass, as in the minor articles of 
dress and manners. The elements of society are 
not merely compacted together as if by some fortu- 
nate action of human affinities in such a way, but 
are rather constructed into a great harmonious 
mechanism, as a wondrous piece of divine work- 
manship ; and all the more wondrous, for its stabil- 
ity and elasticity and impressible qualities of every 
kind, because made of living hearts each endowed 
with full power of self-direction, and composed of 
members that are not the same for any considerable 



AND THE PROGRESS OF THE PEOPLE, 341 

time, either in themselves or in their combinations. 
Of this grand enginery the scholars of the world 
are the directors, determining towards what ends 
it shall work, and with what amount of inward 
force. But for them it would be motionless, or if 
moving it would move only in perverted directions. 
All the new inventions of the day are but the new 
ideas of studious thinkers wrought into wood and 
stone and iron. Without scholars the world would 
be without books, without philosophy, without in- 
ventions, v/ithout opinions, without thought and 
witkout rehgion. 

How great then are the responsibilities of edu- 
cated men ! Their ideas and tastes and habits and 
decrees are the mighty, though unwritten, laws of 
society. From the energy of their mental move- 
ments, comes the shock that moves all its wheels. 

And how great are the duties of each genera- 
tion, in this matter, to posterity ! The utmost 
possible facilities should be furnished in every age, 
not only for procuring and diffusing at the time the 
Higher Christian Education, but also for perpetu- 
ating it for ever. As all the advanced points of 
Modern Civilization have been gained by earnest 
Christian study, thought, argument and authorship, 
in the same way must they be maintained and new 
points beyond be reached. What has been gained 



342 THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

in the past must be botli preserved, and enlarged 
to new degrees of extent and of excellence. 

Let tlien the people know well their own guides 
and deliverers. Let them recognize their indebt- 
edness to Christianity, for all the light of life and 
the glory of society. And, if they would wreathe 
their names with grateful memories in the hearts of 
their descendants, let them be careful to leave, in 
every permanent form, as large a legacy as possible 
of true sanctified thoughts and influences. The real 
riches of any life to mankind consist in the contri- 
bution that it makes, directly or indirectly, to the 
common stock of Human Intelligence, Human 
Comfort and Human Goodness. 



INDEX. 



A. 

Accommodation of Eequisitions, 195. 

Accuracy, a Jewel, 225, 233. 

Acquisition, Tleasures of, 207. 

Acropolis, 112. 

Action, Valued by the Ancients, 6T. 

Aesthetics, 92, 293. 

Age, Wants of the, 147. 

Ambition, 170. 

Anatomy Revealing God, 99. 

Ancient Education, 66-7. 

Aristotle, 2i)4, 206. 

Art: Ancient, 67, lOS-9 ; to be Culti- 
vated, lOS-9, 119 ; its Chief Beauties, 
210, 234. 

Aspiration, 112-14. 

Athens, 112 ; Athenians, 304. 



Bacon, Lord, 206, 20S. 

Beauty ; its Otlico in Education, 105-8 ; 
thu Scholar's Sense of it, 231. 

Benevolence Necessary to Happiness, 
93, 115-6. 

Bible : its Place in Schools and Col- 
leges, 110-2 ; its Power, 332. 

Bible-truth : its Loveliness, 89. 

Body : its Divine Use and Dignity, 78; 
Exquisitely Formed, 215, 257. 

Books, Garners of Ancient Thought, 
104 ; of the Beauty of Nature, lOS. 



C. 



Ctesar, 204, 286. 
Calvin, 117, 206. 
Carbonic Acid Gas, 81. 
tion. 



See Ventila- 



Character, a Field of Art, 49-51 ; its 
Povver, 184; Talent in Reading it, 
181. 

Cheerfulness, 80-1, 133, 179, 260. 

Chemistry: its Utility, 96; its Revela- 
tion of God, 99. 

Childhood : its Special Appeals to our 
Interest, 153, 175 ; the Common 
Abuse of it, 154. 

Christ, the Teacher's Object, 23-6, 124, 
141, 242; His Model, 125; Christ's 
Gentleness, 76. 

Cliristiunity, Dignifies the Body, 78 ; 
its Inliaence on Scholarship, 334; its 
Popularization of Every Tliins; Good, 
273-6 ; its Reforming Power, 182 ; It- 
self, the Completeness of Humanity, 
807-8; Subjective Christianity, 826.' 

Church: God's Mode of Developing, 
66. 

Cicero, 117, 204. 

Civilization Modern, in what it con- 
sists, 335. 

Classics, the Right Mode of Teaching, 
89. 

Classicality, not Frigidity, 241. 

Colh'ge.s, as Places of Ill-health, 40; 
their Present Imperfection, 10.3, 289; 
their Formalism, 176-7 ; College- 
strifes, 267-8. 

Color, Perfection of, 71. 

Common Schools, 2J6-9. 

Communicativeness, 193. 

Composition : the Art of. Splendid, 
120; Excellence in, a Late Attain- 
ment, 193 ; Value of in Self-improve- 
ment, 118, 252-3; Rules for, 253-4; 
False Display in, 192-3. 299. 

Concentration of Mind, 234-6. 

Confidence, Necessity of 187. 

Conservatism of Scholarship, 223, 246. 

Conversational Power, 88. 



344 



INDEX. 



Corporeal Punishment, 183. 
Creation, its End, 13. 
Crises, 170. 
Criticism, 92. 

Critic, tl'.e One to Worlt for, God, 241. 
Critical Scholarship, 225, 228, '238. 
Crowns : their History Among the An- 
cients, 303. 



a. 

Declamation : Value of True Drill in 
it, 117, 193 ; False Displays of, 192-3, 
299. 

Degrees Honorary: Bad Effects of, 
303-10; How Obtained, 308-10 ; the 
Littleness of Hankering after them, 
312; Humboldt's Contempt of them, 
314; the Church the Means of Sus- 
taining them, 314-18 ; the Folly of 
the Title of Honorable, 318 ; the 
Good Sisns of Progress Apparent, 
31T ; the Way to Abolish them, 318. 

Demosthenes, 67, 117, 204. 

Design : Proves a Designer, 99-100, 167 ; 
Wonders of, 257-8. 

Development, Intellectual, 45-7 ; Indi- 
vidually Adapted, 115. 

Devil, Pleased with False Ideas of Ed- 
ucation, S3, 40. 

Devotion to God, 242. 

Difficulties, 225, 248. 

Discipline (Subjectively), 87; (Objec- 
tively) Meaning of the Word, 298; 
Object of, 43, 114-15 : to be Exact, 
172-5; to be Genial, 175-8, 196; Style 
of European, 174; Eight Treatment 
of the Erring, 175; Kesults of " True 
Discipline, 122, 197, 243. 

Divination, 19. 

Drill, Makes the Scholar, 43; its Ne- 
cessity, 115, 161 ; What it Should be, 
291 ; Weakly, Kelaxed, 300. 

Dullards, 30, l69, 302. 

Dwight, 87. 

Dyspepsia, 40. 



IS. 

Earnestness : Great Want of it Among 
Teachers, 151 ; Necessary, 61 ; the 
Path to Success, 188; t'liat of the 
True Scholar, 232-5, 241-3. 

Eating, Eight Habits of, 259-61. 

Education: Nobility of, 8-22, 199; a 
Profession, 10-18, 163; an Art, 11, 
44-.5, 47, 51,126, 161; in Reference to 
Christianity, 7, 28-6 ; Eesults of when 
Poor, 24; True Ends to be Gained, 
48-51, 122, 163, 168, 193, 197, 243; the 
Eesults Actually Gained Unsatisfac- 
tory, 7, 58-60, 148, 150, 169, 173, 198, 
229, 281 ; Influence of Natural Beau- 
ty, 105-8; Should be Extended to 



the Art-side of Our Natures, 109,' 
Should be Eeligious, 123-6, 142 ; How 
the Erring Should be Treated, 182-3. 

Edwards, 37, 206, 214. 

Egyptians, 204. 

Emmons, 37. 

Encouragement of Pupils, 157. 

Energy of Body and Mind, 74. 

Enthusiasm, Power of, 18-19. 

Envy, 322, 325. 

Etvmologies Specific : Health, Heal, 
ilale. Whole and Holy, 68; Eight 
and Wrong, 70 ; Face and Features, 
72 ; Gentle and Genteel, 76 ; Man, 
Mind, Mean, Eemeraber, 81 ; Kind, 
Humane, Generous, 83 ; Industry. 
Indue and Endow, 113 ; Miserly, 116 
Instruct and Instrument, 156 ; School, 
182; Character, 184; Forsive, 204 
Fortitude, '.^28 ; Student, 229 ; Thor. 
ough, 283 ; Integrity and Entire, 243 , 
Supper, Sop and Soup, 260 ; Savage' 
335. 

Examinations, Character of, 192-3. 

Example, Power of; 121, 252, 322-3. 

Exhibitions, Generally Farcical, 192, 
299. 

Evil Moral, 71. 



F. 

Fame, Love of, 25. 

Fashion, Power of, 30, 340. 

Female Education, Defects of, 87-8; 

Degrees, 31-3. 
Form, Beauty of to the Ancients, 67, 

71 ; Perfection of, 71. 
Formalism, 176. 

Freedom of Scholars, 203, 218-23. 
French University System, 98. 



G. 

Games, Ancient, 67, 204. 

Genius, for Government, 170; often a 
Drawback in a Pupil, 196; False 
Proofs of, 213 ; Fitful Flashes of, 227 ; 
Best Proofs of, 236; Self-evincive, 
302. 

Gentleness and Gentlemanliness, 76. 

Geology: its Practical Uses, 96; its 
Manifestation of God, 100. 

Germany and the Germans, 87, 40, 86; 
German Aesthetics, 92 ; Education, 
98; German, as a Study, 103; its 
Words Descriptive, 255. 

God : as an Educator, 18, 158 ; His Love 
to M.an, 15, 238 : the Sense of His Ex- 
istence where, Gained, 167-8; Use to 
be Made of His Word, 110, and of 
His Presence and Love, 46, 111, 157, 
191-2, 231-2, 239, 264; Aiming at His 
Glory, 191. 

Goethe, 87. 



INDEX. 



345 



Government : Elpments of Success in, 
m, irr-S; Punishment, 183. 

Graeefulness, 74-5. 

Greeks, SO, 86, 112, 204, 332. 

Greek Education, 67. 

Grimm, 37, 206. 

Growth of Mind 47, 49 ; Dependent on 
Mental Activity, 178 ; Sources of 
Growth, 320. 

Gymnasia, German, 290. 



H. 

Health, Meaning of the AVord, 68: a 
Duty, Power and -Jov, 69-70 ; for 
Beauty, 70-2 ; the Resultant of What, 
77, 263-7; its Moral Uses, 73-4. 

Heathenism, 20, 72. 

Herculaneum, 66. 

Hereditary Evils, 262-3. 

Heroism, "20, 224; True Heroes, 227. 

History: Value of the Study, 84, 164, 
the True Mode, the. Philosophical, 

85, 16.5; True Mode of Teaching it, 

86, 166. 
Homer, 19. 

Honor, 12, 1.35; Human Honor as an 
Object, 139 ; the Eesult of Character, 
221 ; its Supei-ficial Eorms, 226-7 ; 
Not Marketable, 304; lionorableness, 
267-8 : Title of Honorable, 318. 

Hopefulness, 225-6. 

Horace, 1.33. 

Human Nature, Knowledge of, 82-3. 

Humboldt: his Age, 27; his Contempt 
of Titles, 314. 

Hygienic Eules: Good Air. 35 ; Mental 
Activity, 36-7, 69 ; Industry, 27, 247 ; 
Joy, 2.55. See word Joy ; Religious 
Stimulations, 68, 77-8, SO ; Moderate 
Eating, 2.59-61 ; Evils of High Sea- 
soned Food, 261, and of Stimulating 
Drinks, 261 ; Power of Strong Health, 
256-7. 

I. 

Ideas : their Power, 55 ; the Staple of 
Instruction, 160; Pleasure of Acquir- 
ing, 208. 

Ideals : the Teacher's, 51 ; to be Formed 
for the Student Rightly, 159; Those 
of the True Scholar, 236. 

Ideal, of College Education : Sugges- 
tions for Improving, 10.3-5, 293. 

Idleness of Mind : its LTnhe.althiness, 
29 ; its Baseness, 285 ; its Great Prev- 
alence, 150, 277-9. See Indifferent- 
ism. 

Indifferentism, Abounding, 15, 59-60, 
150, 169,266, 277-8, 283. 

Individual Treatment in Education, 
284-6 ; Want of it in Common Schools, 
297-S. 

Industry : Meaning of the Word, 113 ; 



its Necessity, 79, 178, 179, 192, 247 ; its 
Connections with Religion, 33; its 
Supposed Dangerousness, 33. 

Influence. Insensible, 52, 184. 

Ingratitude of Youth, 57. 

Insight, Necessity of, 166; the Schol- 
ar's, 223, 230-2, 244. 

Instruction : Meaning of the AVord, 
156; True Spirit of,'151-2; its Mode, 
161 ; its Highest Departments, 162. 



J. 

Joy: as Ministrant to Health, 27,83, 
56, 70, 80, 263-7 ; to Power over Oth- 
ers, 146; the Joy of Mental Toil, 235, 
257; See Words, Work and Indus- 
try ; Reasons for Joy, 263-6. 



K. 



Labor : Necessary to Success, 192 ; 
Should be Made a Joy, 143, 224; No 
Curse, 144-5 ; Without Thought Bru- 
tish, 282. 

Language, the Chief of all Studies, 86, 
169, 2j1; Relation of Ancient Lan- 
guages, 251. 

Law, in all God's Works, 77, 172 : God's 
Law the Basis of all Laws, 307 ; Le- 
gal Science as a Study, 101-2. 

Lecturing, 164, 168. 

Leibnitz, 37, 206. 

Le Yerrier, 96. 

Life, the True View of, 2.32. 

Literature: its Historic Continuity, 90; 
its Treasures, 90 ; English Literature, 
91 ; Historical Composition as a 
Branch of it, 164. 

Little Things, 210, 211. 

Lostic, as a Study, 101. 

Luther, 20, 117. 

m. 

Mammon, its Power, 16, 17. 

Man : Meaning of the Word, 81; True 

Manliness. 17.5, 306 ; Human Dignity, 

2i9-81 ; Impressibility of Human 

Mind, 121. 
Marius, 329. 
Material Influences: their Power on 

the Mind, 26, 66-78 ; Materialistic 

Ideas, 175, 336. 
Mathematics, 94, 103. 
Maxims of Scholarship, 237. 
Mechanical Teaching, 54, 60, 117. 
Medical Art, Secrets of, 56. 
Mental Influences, their Power on the 

Body, 27. 



346 



INDEX. 



Mental Science, its Eank, 101 ; the Ba- 
sis of Divine Science, 8-2. 

Mind, the Source of Modern Power, 
116, 204. 

Minerva, 81, 112. 

Ministry : its Work Compared with 
that of Education, 21, 12T. 

Mistaltes in Education, 58, 141. 

Monotony in Teaching, 55. 

Moral Science, its Place and Use, 101. 

Moses, 214. 

N. 

Napoleon, 19, 25, 185. 

Nature, for Man, 14, 84, 103-8, 263-6; 

Practically Deified, 169. 
Nelson, 25. 
Nicety, in Art and Scholarship, 210, 

233-4. 
Niobe, 328. 

Nobility, its History, 304. 
Nordheimer, 33. 
Novelty, Unnecessary to Enthusiasm, 

55. 
Numa, 19. 

O. 

Objectivity, 83, 93, 239, 250, 264. 

Obstacles : the Will Made to Conquer 
Them, 29 ; to be Purposely Set Be- 
fore Scholars, 157 ; they Yield to Ef- 
fort, 248. 

Order : the True Conception of it in a 
Teacher, 171-3 ; the Love of it in a 
Pupil, 197. 



P. 

Pastime, Killing Time, 29. 

Patience ; its Sources, 225, 228 ; Its 
Power, 227. 

Paul, 19, 66, 117, 206, 214, 228, 232, 316. 

Personal Influence, 51-8, 138-40, 184. 

Philology : its Great Discoveries, 88. 

Physical Strength the Basis of Ancient 
Society, 204-5. 

Physicians, Mistakes of, 31, 262. 

Physiology: its Profitableness, 96, 97; 
its Revelation of God, 100. 

Pitt'.i Habits, 261. 

Plato, 204, 206, 207. 

Plymouth Colony, 330. 

Political Economy, 102. 

Power, the Sense of it Joyful, 218. 

Practicality, 60, 73, 93, 105, 168, 226, 
244, 249. 

Preacbing and Teaching Compared,'21.' 

Prevention, 180. ■ -'• 

Private Schools, their Scope and Val- 
ue, 2S6. 

Prizes : those of Life, 44 ; Influence of 
False Ones, 139. 

Professions, the Learned, 16-17. 



Progress of Society Slow, 277, 307 ; in 
what the Progress of the Age con- 
sists, 383. 

Proverbs, 82, 91, 208, 240, 258, 276, 800, 
301, 306. 

Providence: Dishonored, 40; God's 
Gentleness in it, 76; as Shown in 
History, 86, 166 ; the Beauty of it, 
192; its Positiveness, 225 ; its Inti- 
macy, 240. 

Public Schools: the Term of Study 
Advised in them, 36 ; their Common 
Character, 296-9. 

Punishment Corporeal, 183. 



Qualifications of a Teacher, 18, 22, 
193-5. 

R. 

Eealities, their Preciousness, 301. 
Eeceptivity of the Mind, 81. 
Recitations, the True Ideal of, 159. 
Reforming Power of Christianity, its 

Glory, 189. 
Religion : Made Unlovely to the 

Young, 190; Religious Development 

the Only True Oiie, 240-3. 
Responsiveness, to Outward Objects, 

45, 142, 236; to Others' Influence, 

176. 
Reynolds, 109. 
Rhetoric, 92. 
Romans, the, 39, 228. 
Rulers : Ancient, 204 ; Modern, 205. 
Ruskin, 109. 

S. 

Satire, Obnoxious, 300. 

Science: Acquaintance with, 94-105; 
the Exact Sciences, 94; the ^Natural, 
95 ; their Recent Origin, &c., 96 ; 
Profit of their Study^ 97-8; True 
Mode of Teaching, 16i'. 

Scholarship : Meaning of the Word, 
203 ; its Two Forms, General and 
Special, 149-50, 209 ; its Glory when 
Difl'ased, 151 ; its Characteristics, 
Patience, Enthusiasm and Thorough- 
ness, 224-44 ; its Faults in this Coun- 
try, Haste and Narrowness, 103, 249; 
its Relations to Evangelism, 213, 215. 

Schoolmasters Practically Dishonored, 
10, 16. 

Scrutiny God's, 191. 

Self-culture : its Necessity, 156 ; its 
True Style,.Intellectually, 250-3. 

Self-denial : the Sense of it as Selfish, 
142, 175 ; in its Highest Form, Self- 
Forgctfulness, 142. 

Selfishness, 175, 182. 

Shakspeare, 91, 282. 



INDEX, 



347 



Simplicity of Dress, 806 ; of Character, 

335-6. 
Socrates, 19. IIT. 
Solitude, 207. 
Solomon, 71), 206, 208, 214. 
Speech : the Vehicle of Thought, 116 ; 

to be Cultivated, 118. 
State : Duties of the, to Educational 

Institutions, 284-8 ; the Benefits 

Received by it from them, 2S7-8. 
Stimulation, in Teaching, 42. 
Success, Keasons of Failure in, 94. 



T. 

Tact, 179-83. 

Tasks, 171. 

Teacher: a True One, 57; 131-98; his 
Real Position in his Age, 50, 127, 
199; His Call, IS, 113, 133; His Call- 
ing, 10, IS, 20, 127, 135; Grounds of 
Enthusiasm in his Work, 56, 83 ; his 
Characteristics, 57, 193 ; his Work 
Compared with that of the Minister, 
21, l-'7; with that of the Parent, 1-36, 
177; if a Dullard, Contemptible, 54, 
59, 163; Many a One Ungenial, 175, 
177. 

Teaching. See Education. 

Te.\t-Books, True Use of, 162. 

Theories False, their Power, 29, 69, 266. 

Thoroughness, 233. 

Thought, its Hygienic Power, 86, 7S, 
93 ; its Power ou the World, 116, 204 ; 
it Gives Dignity to Labor, 282 ; Ex- 
pression to the Face, 72, 79; Finish 
to the Body, 78 ; its Pleasures, 265 ; 
its Acceptableness to God, 79. 

Titles, IS, 105; their Tendency to De- 
generate, 304 ; Pleasing to Weak 
Minds, 306. 



Tobacco, 261-3. 

Truth ; its Charms, 212, 215; its Power 
when Combined with Love, 177. 



U. 

Uniforms, Un-American, 305. 
Universities, what they Should Be, 
291. 

V. 

Vedas, 110. 
Ventilation, 34, 38-41. 
Vigor of Nerve, 75. 
Voluntary System Tested, 173. 



War : its Exactions, 286. 

Washington, 185. 

Woman, Power of, 334. 

Work : the Law of Success, 192, 241 ; as 

a Source of Joy, 217, 226, 235, 254-6. 

See Joy ; see also Labor, Industry, 

&c. 



Xenophon, 204 
Xerxes, 329. 



X. 



Y. 



Tale College: the Number Educated 

by it, 295. 
Youth: its Sensibility to Impressions, 

127, 142. 

Z. 
Zeal, 113, 170, 229, 263. 



THE END. 



[l8Aprl.l«60 ] 



^hll 



